KISS is great if you want something really simple that works well.

And people who have no time install gentoo? Pull the other one :D

Interesting, I think it’s different for structural engineering because you’re doing calculations in accordance with a code of practice and the spreadsheet needs to be adapted to tweak the inputs and outputs of a standard formula and apply it slightly differently for different bridges / structural arrangements. I’ve written loads of spreadsheets that have been used and adapted by other people in my company, I honestly don’t think they are that difficult to understand (or people wouldn’t have been able to build on them and adapt them).

I can see that lab software is quite different, especially if you have very well defined procedures and you are repeating exactly the same test again and again with the same inputs and outputs.

In structural engineering (bridge design etc), we use quite complicated spreadsheets for calculations; a database wouldn’t be the right tool for that job. We use excel because everyone knows how to use it and it’s easy to print to PDF and see the inputs and outputs and any graphical summaries you have added. Using a spreadsheet makes it easy to check and easy to adapt/change when you want to do a slightly different calculation next time.

I’ve tried building spreadsheets of similar complexity in libreoffice and it’s true they are very slow in comparison and more prone to crashing.

Libreoffice works well for some tasks and I enjoy using it at home but honestly if I tried to use it at work it would cut my productivity significantly. I’m probably using it more intensively than most people though.

Was not expecting that! What a dark character arc :D

What do you use nowadays?

Auto updates works really well for me so far!

I’ve wanted this for years; in the past manually flashing the privileged extension after every system update was such a pain that I quickly gave up on it.

HP are pretty awful when it comes to shenanigans with ink cartridges and all that, but HPLIP is great and deserves some credit.

I might have to ask you more questions about this when I’m up and running!

It’s a gaming PC but I will use it for other things as well. I don’t want to complicate other tasks because I’ve chosen a really specific OS for gaming, if that makes sense.

No comments except thank you, and please continue to write similar articles!

Apt pinning is such a nice way to pull in some new packages without affecting the whole system. It’s interesting in this specific case and also more generally! I have used it before once or twice but this is the best example I’ve seen for multiple packages.

Thank you so much for the link, it’s just the kind of information I was after. Very clearly written!

I’m also mostly interested in slightly older games like Rome Remastered, I probably won’t be playing many brand new titles.

Might try and get Age of Mythology working as well as I have so much nostalgia for it!

What kind of games are you into?

I haven’t chosen cutting edge hardware (AMD Ryzen 5 5600X and AMD Radeon RX 6650 XT) so I don’t think drivers should be an issue in my particular case.

I think separating /home is a good idea so I can try some different distros and compare.

Apologies if you’re asking for something different but I recently discovered https://annas-archive.org/ which is great for books.

That looks cosy AF

I think standalone mode is just the normal binary with some preset options enabled to allow better control of system/screen settings, auto mounting USB drives etc.

Thanks, in this case that wasn’t suitable for me because it wasn’t a full desktop environment, just Kodi in standalone mode. So there was no easy way to run the command like there would be on a desktop or laptop, I had to add it to my systemd unit file.

Yeah and you also need execute permissions to read what’s in a directory, so 666 for the whole system means you basically lose access to 99% of files

In situations like this can’t you get superuser privileges back using grub?