I don't know specifically about the T470, but if you have an nvidia GPU, you might have issues depending on how the display outputs are connected to the GPUs. I had a T420s at some point with an nvidia GPU, and it was a PITA to get the display output to work on linux. I had to permanently enable the nvidia GPU for that to work (cutting battery life in half), because the display output was connected only to the nvidia GPU. I swore to never buy an nvidia product ever again after that experience.

I'm only saying this because I've seen a few videos about windows users switching to linux mint lately. Having to update the kernel for the computer to work is a common occurrance. IMO the newest available one should be the default one. We should strive towards giving new users the best possible first impression of linux.

They really need to update Mint though. Sure it is good.. on old computers. Anything made the last couple of years will have issues due to an ancient kernel and mesa. We should stop calling it stable/lts and unstable, because users will always pick the one called stable, even if the 'unstable' one is the one that would in most cases work the best for desktop linux. Or at least we should separate the kernel and mesa away from the rest of the 'stable' packages, and include recent versions of that by default, to not scare away people with driver issues.

Yeah linux support for ARM SOCs is not ideal. There might be some fork of the kernel working with specific proprietary driver blobs. But in a few years its basically abandonware.

RISC-V is what we should try to make happen as a replacement for x86, instead of yet another proprietary IP.

It's called T9 typing btw. I'm old enough (30) to have had a few phones with buttons myself before the smartphone era gained momentum. I never got really good at it (didn't text much). My older sister by a few years is a racer at T9 typing though. I remember her phone was making clicking noises at insane rates.

I like the Fossify apps. I use the phone, sms, contacts, gallery and file manager. It's SO nice to not have google nag about cloud backups all the time, when I just wanted to look at some pictures I've taken.

Also whenever I can I download apps from F-Droid instead of play store if they're available both places. For example I use Home Assistant, KeePassDX, Syncthing, Termux, VLC, and more from F-Droid.

Found a couple of new apps to try out in this thread as well :)

I've been using arch for many years now. I've used various distros every once in a while, but I always come back to arch. When arch break it is probably a single package that is causing the issue, and there is likely a forum post explaining how to fix it already when you have an issue. However if I manage to break ubuntu for example, I always have a bad time getting the system back up without a reinstall. I haven't tried using BTRFS for snapshots yet, but I usually format my drive to BTRFS for new systems/reinstalls now, so I have the opportunity at least. Don't know if snapshots would have made a difference for the GRUB issue that happened though. Thankfully it didn't affect me as I use systemd-boot instead.

I also use Gnome, vscode and firefox. Don't know about matlab but there is a wiki page and an aur package, so I think it should work. For gnome if you use extensions, I recommend installing them from the aur, instead of from the web browser, as you won't need to manually update them. For vscode, there is an aur package for the official version from microsoft, but there is also a FOSS version on the main repo (though some extensions may not work/be available out of the box on that one).

One issue arch users may get after a while is the hard drive filling with cached packages. Pacman doesn't delete old packages from the cache automatically, so if you never clear the cache, you will get a copy of every version of every package you've ever installed in the cache. I've made it a habit now every once in a while I'll clear the cache, after an update and I've confirmed the system works after the update. There's a command "paccache" from the "pacman-contrib" package that's convenient for clearing cached packages.

Fun fact tangent: Voss water is literally just tap water from Norway (but not from the town with the same name). There are people literally flushing their toilets with the same water.

TLDR: Long rant about modern smart phones.

I've concluded that it is impossible to get a new phone that has the features I want. Some phone manufacturer always seems to arbitrarily declare useful features/form factors obsolete, maybe replaces it with some new gimmick and gets the hype machine going so all the other manufacturers do the same in fear of becoming irrelevant.

I just wish that some day some company is going to create a smart phone with a reliable fingerprint reader on the back again where it is reachable by fingers on BOTH the left and right hand. Or that some manufacturer will create a phone with a smaller screen than 6 inches. Or god forbid a normal aspect ratio like 16:9 instead of the ridiculously long lightsabers they're making now. Then maybe it would be possible to get it out of my pocket while sitting down. Missing headphone jack is just a drop in the ocean IMO. There are so many other annoyances that I didn't use to have, but now is an issue with modern smart phones.

If I got the chance to dictate what the manufacturers should do. I would tell them to stop. The camera is good enough. Make it smaller and not protruding out the back of the phone so much. The SOC is fast enough. Make it more power efficient instead of chasing for the next GHz. The screen is large enough, just stop. If I wanted a larger screen I would use a tablet. Do some damn QA. Test the main functionality of a phone, which is communication, not game benchmarks, not who can take the prettiest picture of the moon. Is it possible to take the phone out of the pocket without accidentally hanging up on whoever is calling you? Is it possible to send and receive to/from SMS/MMS groups? Does the fingerprint reader actually work or does it just say "sorry too many tries" every time you take the phone out of the pocket before even touching the fingerprint reader?

Just had to get that out of my system :P

That kinda sounds like a bad cable. I've had the same issue with both HDMI and DP before and it was solved with a new cable both times 🙂 Display cables are quite hit and miss when it comes to quality.

Using termux for SSH as well. Haven't heard about croc before. Are there advantages over copying files with ssh (scp) for example?

I personally think opinionated software is better. If the maintainers need to add a bunch of features to please everyone, that's going to be more work to maintain, and more work to set up an instance for example, as you would need to consider more options in the configuration. Being opinionated allows the maintainer to focus on polishing the main functionality, instead of battling tech debt in a project that has grown larger than initially intended.

I'll use another controversial project as example. The Gnome desktop environment has gotten a lot of negative attention due to the opinionated implementation, e.g 3rdparty extensions/theming breaking on updates. As a gnome user myself I've been annoyed many times. But I've been using fewer and fewer extensions and gotten more used to the "gnome way" lately, and have come to really appreciating Gnome for what it is. I keep coming back to gnome after trying alternatives, as it works pretty good out of the box and is a cohesive experience.