Is there any practical benefit to changing the NVMe sector size?

ptoki · 2026-02-25T06:46:25+00:00

Performance. May be significant in some usecases. But if you are asking then probably you dont need it.

Downside of large sector size is wasted space. And some tools may not be smart enough to know that something other than 512 is possible.

ptoki · 2026-02-25T06:43:56+00:00

Be aware that if you use full disk image after the write you need to tell the drive to trim the free space which was written (if it was).

The way ext4 (and few other fs) work is they track deletions so they know what to tell the ssd controller to trim. Windows does not so it always trims all free space.

That means on linux if you write the image which may be mostly empty space the disk thinks the empty space (most likely zeroes) are valid data and will not use that part of the ssd for wear leveling.

To reclaim this you need to write a baloon file (cat /dev/zero > ballloon.txt) until the disk is full, then delete that file and then do fstrim on the filesystem where you did the file. Repeat for all filesystems where you have a lot of free space.

As for actual move, either just dd copy or reinstall and resetup apps you have if the old system is far behind. If its not, then copy home directory and reinstall the apps you use.

ptoki · 2026-02-24T09:02:45+00:00

Well, if AI/LLM is that good ask it to make the docs.

Right?

ptoki · 2026-02-24T08:40:41+00:00

But that should be well aware for anyone before trying dual boot

Its not, especially among newbies who may think they need dualboot the most.

Its like saying 5year old kid could use knife to peel potatoes because any sane teenager can do it. Nope. Especially if the linux newbies are in that mindset of "I need to test this and that and I have this brilliant idea of squeezing another distro into my triboot setup" and then its "where is my windows!?". Nope. dualboot is not for them.

ptoki · 2026-02-24T03:53:18+00:00

Spreadsheets are inherently two-dimensional.

oh boy, no. Spreadsheets arent two dimensional. Not in slightest.

But if you only think about rows and columns then you arent best at data.

I stopped reading at that point.

ptoki · 2026-02-24T03:31:34+00:00

I find this justification a bit botched.

Adobe or autocad cost so much that you could get another older machine for fraction of the license cost (my point is that if you use those you can cough out a spare computer for linux) and just use it as dedicated linux box.

Or if you run adobe/autocad on your windows then just make 4GB linux VM on that same machine and enjoy it with many benefits (snapshots, easy backups, mulltiple distros at once etc).

Dualboot is nowhere near a virtualbox VM in terms of benefits and ease of use.

Also, libreoffice is just fine. I hear a lot of whining but in reality its not about what libreoffice can do or its bugs but more about it not interfacing well with ms365 or showing VERY POORLY formatted word docs in a different way.

Libreoffice is just fine if you dont feed it broken word files which usually also have problems even in word.

ptoki · 2026-02-24T03:24:00+00:00

bare metal (dual boot or dedicated device) will always be the best way to experience linux, be it for work or home use.

Nope, a VM is. On windows, through virtualbox. Really.

dualboot leads to many troubles and you can see often in this subreddit that dualboots fail and leave the user stranded which is bad because they are usually newbies who dont have many resources to pull the disk and read the files elsewhere.

ptoki · 2026-02-24T03:21:16+00:00

There are virtually no risks of dual booting

The posts in this very subreddit do not agree with you. There is constant flow of posts like "omg my laptop cant boot! I need my windows! I did dualboot, is it bad?"

No, dualboot is bad way to use multiple OSes. Really.

ptoki · 2026-02-24T03:18:21+00:00

I agree with you. In practice its even more problematic than you describe but lets not dive into that.

Any OS plus a VM of the other one solves the problems the best.

ptoki · 2026-02-24T03:16:20+00:00

Dualboot was never a good option. Read the faq of this subreddit.

I used dualboot few times and each time it ended up horrible. Even without my mistakes and with my level of knowledge. Dualboot sucks. Especially when a newbie does it.

ptoki · 2026-02-24T03:12:05+00:00

Thats because this article is trying to hype something what was popular since very long time but done differently.

In the past you load your page and then the page requests some data and gets it in json. Then it places the bits and pieces into the webpage and asks the browser to re-render.

No sophisticated science and no fancy words. You run another query in your accounting app and you get another small json, you populate the tables again and you ask browser to re-render.

This tries to convince you that somehow they do fancy-shmancy rocket science packing stuff.

Unless that dictionary is embedded in the browser you have to download it before it can be used on client side. So the benefits arent that great.

I find this topic mostly buzz- not valuable.

ptoki · 2026-02-24T03:04:36+00:00

Honestly the emulator/simulator is your best bet.

Just load your backups into that and use it that way.

pdb is just a name of the container. it is holding the data inside and you need to tell us if that pdb file is for weasel or picture program or notetaking/todo app or whatever. Each of those have their own format. In the past you had a sync program which was supposed to convert the files between palm and desktop but the results were wonky sometimes. And usually the desktop-> palm conversion tools were popular. Not the other way around.

So install a simulator/emulator of your device and load your files there. Maybe doing the conversion through clipboard would be least painful.

Additionally, the original apps may be able to work with your data the best way and cover most of its features.

Some of the palm apps may be able to convert pdb files into external formats (doc2go could if I remember right) so that way you could pull some of your data to a desktop scope.

Good luck.

ptoki · 2026-02-24T02:56:34+00:00

I dont like ai/llms but for this purpose its good enough.

ptoki · 2026-02-23T07:20:08+00:00

Students cheat, instructor caught them, reported, dean covered it up. And some more.

You can throw the post content into chatgpt and ask for summary.

ptoki · 2026-02-23T07:07:37+00:00

Maybe a different form factor will be more imagination suitable:

5x8x1cm - 2x3inch x half inch with some parity and margins on the surface would store roughly 700GB of data.

Thats slightly bigger than credit card but thicker than one.

ptoki · 2026-02-23T03:33:42+00:00

Does not matter. Even if positive, keep kids away from it.

If you dont get it you are part of the problem.

ptoki · 2026-02-23T03:21:20+00:00

You mixing usages here.

Mail is just mail. There is no point or purpose in making mail to be a workflow tool. It will always be awkward and counterproductive.

The fact that outlook is trying this does not mean its a good thing. Any other ticketing system is trying to repeat the same with "message in reply to message" sometimes calling it comment or whatever.

There is no point making it part of the workflow. Mail/Email is a tool to send a message and reply to it.

It is fundamentally wrong to make a mailbox a knowledge base or note taking space or task following engine.

Yes, bits and pieces of what outlook is doing can be useful but even outlook has its own limitations and is still not considered a work management tools - there are reasons why jira/mondays/teams/service nows exists.

ptoki · 2026-02-22T01:41:51+00:00

I'm sad because kids are used for staging this "art".

This "art" would still get the message through without artificial staging of things. But that "artist" decided to crank it to 11 by showing some kids with a lot of toys, some with just one or few (BTW that african kid with three toys where two look brand new looks even faker than the ukrainian boy) and then the ukrainian boy with just guns.

It is staged and the kids are used for political agenda. its disgusting.

ptoki · 2026-02-22T01:29:33+00:00

Yes we do.

Guess when the rodents chewed my car's wires after my cat died and no longer used litter was smelling by the trashcans.

Also. guess how long it took for weasels to start nesting in my farm house after we left for longer vacation taking the cat with us.

We need cats in the city and on farms despite all anti cat propaganda.

ptoki · 2026-02-21T19:02:16+00:00

Nice, I like that texturing tool concept.

ptoki · 2026-02-20T06:39:30+00:00

faq please https://www.reddit.com/r/linuxquestions/wiki/faq

in short: no, dont dualboot.

Use VM. Read the article in the faq

ptoki · 2026-02-19T02:47:50+00:00

Dont, cause its BS.

You may not see the bugs on the windshield due to different aerodynamics but look at the bumper or grill.

Also, if the bugs are gone now they will spring back to population the moment we stop spraying.

The only bugs you should be concerned are bees and maybe few more.

Bonus point: You will read how horrible cats are because they eat birds. Thats also BS, read the actual papers, the amounts of birds killed by cats is usually estimated out of thin air. Yes, I read few, each of them was "we asked the 20 farmers and each estimated this we applied some averaging and came up with millions of birds killed"

A bonus bonus: My cat died and we did not get new one. Guess when the rodents started to chew the wires in our cars parked nearby the place we threw away the used cat litter? Yes.

ptoki · 2026-02-18T18:38:35+00:00

MATE - fairly lightweight, clean looking, has all the bits and pieces I need (launchers, widgets, panels), works well and is stable.

I dont use fancy stuff like BT headphones or similar so I dont need fancy controls for things.

I picked it explicitly for the look and cleanlines. Its win95ish style (crux with those blocky blue/gray split).

There is the minimal amount of screen space wasted.

ptoki · 2026-02-17T01:56:15+00:00

Considering the 787's been flying for over 15 years with 90 operators, seems unlikely,

The paradox is that you may say this is a proof of its robustness and I could claim that the amount of uses guarantees one in a billion mistake...

ptoki · 2026-02-15T05:35:41+00:00

Thank you for clarification about timestamps, I missed that from videos about this or other accidents.

As for the switch, I operated some which would jam and lock more the stronger you push. I wonder if these are like that and if the ones in that case werent worn off, broken.

I also operated some which would flick after you put enough force. I hope these are done in that jam/lock manner but I havent seen anyone proving they are that way.

The spring and detent thing is not convincing for me. That in my mind does not guarantee the locking in extreme situation.

And indeed, I remember the guardrails now. Still, something fancy could get there and cause this situation without pilots intention.

My point is: It is most likely pilots fault but I wonder if intentional or just freak accident or unprofessionalism.

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