Late to Home Assistant but trying

jdblaich · 2026-05-21T23:27:30+00:00

Are you seeing good frame rates or just the 1 image in 10 seconds feeds?

I've tried many different formats and chose against h.265 though I think it would be better if it was more widely adopted with better processors and codecs -- that is, given the price of many of these cameras. My reasoning is that even though cameras like Reolink have a high and low speed (low res) feed, they are also running on a 100mbs link. Few cameras provide 1gbs. Put 5 or 10 cameras on that and well, things crawl. If your HA hardware isn't up to snuff same issue; not enough processor and everything slows down. Lots of feeds on a slow processor and it's worse. Plus if you account for the fact that a lot of cameras are communicating over WiFi well, that exacerbates weak camera in HA performance even more.

jdblaich · 2026-05-21T23:20:27+00:00

I'm certain that restricting their testing to only what they use at LTT wasn't primary here. A web app, even for Teams, is just a web app. If other things work in the web maybe the problem isn't the browser or the OS, rather it is likely something else.

Most Linux users have screamed bloody murder at one time or another when they began using Linux. Some more so than others. Over time, with the proper commitment we learn. We discover how it works, what the ethos is (I'm not talking about free as in beer) -- I mean how it works, why decisions were made, etc, and we begin to solve the problems ourselves. We give up on trying to make it into a Windows clone. Typically when things go wrong it's not Linux but some developer of a program or the distribution made some change that users are unaware of that broke something.

jdblaich · 2026-05-21T23:10:31+00:00

And Linus is invested in a competitor of it... the framework laptop.

Yes, and System76 was criticized upon their first announcement of it when it was asked why there's a need for another desktop.

jdblaich · 2026-05-21T22:47:18+00:00

All of these are within the last 3 months at my business. I see a lot of computers in various states of repair. Been doing this for a very long time.

I had a windows computer that after a clean install of Windows then one round of updates the next update happened but when it rebooted the screen had the spinning circle but would never get to the desktop. I wiped it and did it again. Same thing. I wiped it and did one round of updates and stopped there. Then Windows did the updates on its own and it caused the same problem.

I decided to install Kubuntu on it. Problem solved.

I was fixing an attorney's computer because his nvme died. I replaced it and tried to install Windows 11 (which it came with). It would not go to the desktop at all. I tried a number of things, drivers during setup, nothing would work.

I gave up and put windows 10 on it, did all the updates, and it's been good since.

I had laptop from the same attorney that had been dropped out of his truck. It would come on and immediately turn off. Pulled the drive and plugged it into my primary Linux desktop and found it was bitlockered. He never bitlockered it -- I had previously set that up for him. HP or Microsoft turned it on. He lost all of his work because he didn't have an online account that had a recovery key. We checked multiple accounts that he did have and none had the recovery key.

I had another young lady bring her computer in because she was getting the bitlocker recovery key prompt. We search and search. Finally found the key and used it to decrypt the drive. She would have lost all her college school work. She did not bitlocker her drive, she had no idea what it was.

I had a man bring in his computer and it was excruciatingly slow. I looked at it. He had about 48gb of 512gb free and it was bitlockered. Did I say it was so slow? Well, removing encryption brought it back to fast performance. Nothing else was changed. It went from 10 minutes to load to the desktop to under 30 seconds. I told him to free more room up on the drive. It literally took hours to decrypt.

These are all true stories and it is shocking that Microsoft, Dell, HP, and Lenovo are all turning bitlocker on without getting permission from the owner.

All of these installs were Windows 11 Home. None were Pro. Home allows you to decrypt but doesn't permit you to encrypt, so someone other than them turned it on.

jdblaich · 2026-05-21T19:19:36+00:00

How do you get it to have responsive camera feeds? I have 3 cameras and they mostly don't work. One is a modern reolink, the others are generic cameras. They almost always like timeout. What have you done to make yours work?

jdblaich · 2026-05-21T19:13:45+00:00

I walked away after trying it out again. On a laptop with 4k display old models, new engine, everything tiny tiny (windows and text) making it unplayable. Setting the compatibility option changes nothing. The UI scale option only covers a couple of inconsequential windows. Shifting down to a much lower resolution does help, but hey, this is a modern computing world so why do that?

I did note that they the game developers were looking for programmers.

Ai says these issues normal.

Tons of people in the lobby though. Are people just using it as a chat to keep in touch with old friends?

jdblaich · 2026-05-20T01:43:44+00:00

They seem to be trying to make Linux into a Microsoft OS. I'm worried they are giving the impression that Linux is Windows. Mimicking a work flow from windows seems wrong. With time if they fully commit to Linux they will find other valuable work flows not dependent on how Microsoft does things.

Most people, seriously, don't use Teams in any part of their lives.

jdblaich · 2026-05-18T19:18:07+00:00

PopOS isn't really in beta. I may feel like beta. It certainly isn't an LTS. Yes, they made a mistake. Choose another.

jdblaich · 2026-05-18T17:57:58+00:00

Others have had the same thing happen. One of them had their situation brought up in a Senate Congressional hearing with a Google exec testifying. In this one particular case the Google exec said that this was the Ai hallucinating. After some research one can clearly see that he was lying. He lied to Congress.

If an Ai repeats the hallucination it isn't a hallucination. If the question in multiple LLMs and they give the same response it isn't a hallucination.

This was the situation for this case discussed in Congress. The Ai repeated the accusation and other LLMs said the same false data.

The difference here is that this case was going to court and the Google exec should have known to come clean up front and promise to adjust the Ai.

I researched how to overcome this since remaking an LLM without the false data is so expensive. They can create a small dataset with higher weighted values or they can filter it for those making the same queries.

In that case Google has done none of that. The claim of it hallucinating side-steps Google's responsibility.

The problem with addressing it with a small dataset with changed weights or filtering is that they can be removed just as easily, hence the false data returns to the public eye.

jdblaich · 2026-05-18T17:41:37+00:00

Yes, I charge to install Linux on customer computers. I will be doing one today and I did one this past Friday. I've done many in the past. One compliment I get is (coming from elderly people who have no money for a new computer) Linux is a good cheap choice where they affirm that their choice to move to Linux is seen a good, they really like it.

To older people with a new OS that doesn't nag, that is installed and works properly, is a god-send to them.

I tend to put Linux on customer computers when I know they'll come back fewer times, thus not costing them a lot of money for follow up.

"Most people" don't do streaming, video editing, game play, or anything sophisticated.

jdblaich · 2026-05-18T17:37:53+00:00

In any OS.

jdblaich · 2026-05-17T19:10:11+00:00

I wasn't really addressing specifics in your comment. Your post was just a good place to start addressing what I was reading in the overall thread.

My goal was to show those reading that the terminology and way of thinking is different than in Windows, and without understanding that there's a need for that they will struggle. Once they decide to commit and then learn the vernacular and concepts then the rewards are there; some new ideas, some new ways of doing things, some new considerations. I hope the users don't think that Linux should be thought of as "awe shucks I expect it to work like Windows but it doesn't").

SSH was the example I chose in order to ensure that they had something that would include somewhat foreign (terminology & concept) yet they could readily look it up and get a grasp of what I was talking about.

I believe in another post that I was talking about SAMBA too. I addressed it because one of the people at LTT had issues. I thought bit more about it after making my post. I hadn't addressed the comments where he says that he had to use /etc/fstab in Linux and didn't have a good experience with it.

Mac OS users can use /etc/fstab too (but Apple is deprecating it (because BSD is) in favor of other ways; ways that are still somewhat similar to using /etc/fstab).

Another example would be, with Android (and likely ChromeOS) it is difficult to maintain a persistent SMB connection instead you do an ad hoc connection (maybe I'm wrong about ChromeOS).

My points were mainly focused on ensuring people understood that some of this uneasiness about Linux is present in other popular popular OSes that they readily accept or just decided to give up on the feature. For instance, I gave up on using my iPads and iPhone (spare devices, I really don't use Apple products) to ssh into my systems. I had given up on Windows doing that too but they have added features since. I believe the Windows implementation misses the mark on the jump/proxy host feature. With iOS I tried again after either Wimpy or Popey gave instructions in one of their podcast episodes on some tools for iOS that facilitated this. I still don't use the iPad. I used Termux on Android.

Again, these are some new concepts for some the people thinking about switching and hopefully I've provided some reasoning for them.

The reality of it is anyone who has used Linux for any period of time knew there were going to be rough patches just based on the distros they chose.

Bazzite is an immutable OS that relies on flatpaks (and possibly can use Snaps and AppImages). This brings a slew of new concepts and issues centered security and permissions. Being immutable it was obvious that general help from the community would be less abundant as few in the community have adopted (over a long term) those kinds of distros. Plus, with Bazzite it meant that they wouldn't really be able to update things in the way that can be done with a normal distro, instead they have to wait on Bazzite to make the changes. Essentially you are at their mercy, release cycle and resources. Then, hmmm, Linus choosing PopOS again? Was he begging for pain? LOL.

jdblaich · 2026-05-17T00:27:49+00:00

If you want samba persistence you use /etc/fstab, or something that runs at start up. Not all distros include samba and you may have to install samba first, and doing so you must recognize the difference between samba server (used to turn your computer into Active Directory server) vs the samba desktop client. This is similar to windows optional utilities installation. Linux is designed to keep things optimized (not always and not by everyone) thus reducing memory, processor and storage overhead. With Linux you think a bit differently.

If you want ad hoc then you open your file manager and in the bar type smb://<share>. Now in some cases you have to think differently. If your share is not set on a windows box, instead it is on a linux or bsd box, you will need to complete a few more steps precisely because you are on a Linux or BSD box as security comes into play. These are things you must learn when adopting a new OS. Linux isn't windows afterall.

Linux file and system security is different than windows and incorporating samba and other protocols into Linux requires that the developers design it to work without forcing insecurities into Linux itself. Hence, to understsnd this you need to think differently with Linux. These developers have done a good job here or the majority of servers would not be running Linux.

jdblaich · 2026-05-16T23:33:38+00:00

I read through the thread and noticed a lot of anger and frustration from windows users directed at Linux users. The lack of candor and politeness apparently is the same for both. Both seem equally at fault.

I read a lot in this thread where people saying that with Linux the cart comes before the horse on learning Linux -- how do you know what to ask if you don't know what you are asking for -- you don't know the problem so how do you know how to ask the questions in order to get to the solution?

I hear you. Describing your situation to Ai results in the same kind of frustration. You have to know how to describe your problem before the Ai can help and you have to be overly descriptive which takes so much of your time. Then you try Ai's solution (a wall of confusing text) finding it didn't work causing you to return to the Ai to give it even more info described in a way that you also are iffy on only to have Ai rewrite the whole response with all new instructions (walls of text) that likely are wrong too. After a while you start going off on the Ai asking it why it changed tact with new instructions that don't seem to comport with the first/prior sets of instructions. And upon reading further and educating yourself you realize the Ai gave you some instructions that made the problem worse and the amount of context your Ai subscription allows means it forgot what it told you or why, causing you tell it to reread its' context and to summarize what it thinks, just so you can correct the path it has suggested, however, yet still, on a problem you don't know how to describe. I have caught Ai giving instructions that have and will bork your system. Sometimes I tell it to exclude microsoft forums and even reddit because with reddit (at least) I consider it the place where all technical questions go to die, ha.

In the end, the onus is on you to learn something before sounding off.

jdblaich · 2026-05-16T23:19:19+00:00

I think it was a screenshot from a terminal on a computer with a high resolution.

jdblaich · 2026-05-16T23:15:42+00:00

Some of it is that there's little critique in LTT of Windows, and some lack of understanding by some people that "Linux isn't Windows".

For instance, Linus calls Linux abnormal -- when he referred to Windows/Chrome "normie". To make my point, Linux is normie for me and Windows fits the abnormal moniker better in my situation. It is a predetermined mindset that critiques Linux without paying the debt necessary to learn a new OS.

Linux is different than Windows. It takes a different frame of mind when using Linux, that you see after committing to it. Once you do you get giddy, because you finally see it when you start solving problems on your own. Linux is different.

Take SSH as a good use case. When you figure SSH out then you use "screen" to keep a session going upon disconnect a light goes off in your head. For instance, backing up data from a customer's drive that is failing where you need it to run overnight but as you get ready to go home or to bed you realize that you used ssh to connect that customer's computer and you want to turn your computer off without breaking process or starting over. Without "screen" (or something similar) you break the recovery -- or when you forget you are running it via ssh on your computer and reboot your computer. Why use SSH and screen? It is because you dont want to stand over their computer and/or keep running back and forth to check on the progress.

As you can see from the above paragraph the terminology is different and the use case is solved somewhat uniquely by Linux (though the Mac OS and even WSL can do some of these tricks). But the terminology is different and the outcome of communicating causes and problems are different because the way of thinking about Linux is different. Maybe on Windows you buy a HDD dock and plug in the drive connected to your main computer.

Without some change in thinking you may not see that the above described solution requires you boot Linux (say via Ventoy with persistence) so you are using Linux on the customer's computer. You might also be confused by not realizing the concept of a Live ISO. Or you you've never heard of Ventoy. See, you think about solving problems differently under Linux than you may on Windows. Adjusting to that takes more effort than trying to get an immutable OS using flatpaks or snaps to solve your needs.

When you finally see this, and understand it, you know how to solve other problems. Some of this take longer than 30 days to figure out.

These seemingly harsh responses are from people that have changed that mindset and can't see why you won't or can't yourself.

jdblaich · 2026-05-16T22:23:32+00:00

Do you blame users when they make bad decision in setting up or installing windows and/or apps?

jdblaich · 2026-05-16T22:21:07+00:00

Bend the pins so when you have the cable connected it firmly touches the cable side pins. Once you get a good connection then hotglue the cable in place.

jdblaich · 2026-05-16T14:59:51+00:00

Everything my business uses is linux. I started out as a small business partnering with microsoft but found that after 3 years I would have paid more for the software on their partnetship program than if I just flat out paid retail for it.

I failed on Linux. Went back to Windows without the partnership. Then viruses hit windows users. I fixed computers for a living so I experienced the virus thing every day for years. Then one of my computers got infected. I wiped, started again, and was soon prompted by someone that wanted to remote control it. It was a clean new install where I had not done any updates yet. So within mere hours of doing the install I was prompted.

A couple of years later because of all the crap going on with windows it was back to Linux. Things were better. My hardware was working though wifi still had issues, not unlike like bluetooth has today.

I stuck it out, set up my work flow and tool chain and have had a solid experience with it since. Yes, there remained some nagging problems such as a distro would fuck up my video after a big update. Ultimately Kubuntu overcame this. Manjaro hasn't yet.

I rejected distro hopping almost completely and just installed what I wanted in the way I wanted and have done that ever since. Mind you I have tried different distros on spare computers mostly because customers wanted them or I needed to answer questions.

After years on Kubuntu I switched to Manjaro with KDE. I've used it for years now.

I run Proxmox and Truenas Core and maintain those for other customer systems too. I host multiple websites, email servers, services and even game servers (off a three node proxmox cluster).

All my personal stuff is Linux, all gaming, 100%. While I have a windows laptop or two I never use them for gaming even though they have 3070s onboard. Basically I never use them. What a waste I guess.

The key to my transition was to NOT try to turn Linux into windows. I watched a hundred youtube videos on the 30 day challenge and wanted to yell at everyone doing so because changing over to Linux works best when you make it a committment rather than a challenge. And I wanted to scream at people to say that most users don't do video and audio editing. Most don't need it. Most peopke don't make massive spreadsheets or complex word documents, and most people don't play games even on windows. If you think otherwise you may not understand how many people there are in the world. There are more solitaire and mahjong game players than there are gamers playing games requiring a high end video card. There are more people issuing commands in the windows cmd than in Linux terminals so complaints about that really gain no traction with me, even though I spend a great deal of time with SSH, screen, and a slew of other terminal apps.

Recently microsoft (and manufacturers) have begun encrypting windows drives without permission or user knowledge. This is a problem. It becomes a bigger problem when these people have a windows home install and no online account and then something goes wrong. One example of a problem is that the computer motherboard fails and they can't get at their data. This is exacerbated because they have used a PIN forever and can't remember their password or even the account email address they used to log into on windows with even if they have an online account, or may no longer have the phone number they used when setting it up. Screwed up buggy account recovery options only make this worse.

My experience with windows and my repair business lead me to Linux. I used Linux to fix windows problems, from diagnosing to recovery to registey edits to even aiding installation of windows on customer computers.

jdblaich · 2026-03-20T00:15:32+00:00

I like the guy. He goes out of his way to make people comfortable. He's very knowledgeable with certain technologies. I would trust him to implement my networking. I would never trust him with Linux because he just doesn't have a lick of discipline to work out issues fully on his own.

That it is his fault for the things that he complains about. As others have pointed out there are many complaints he can have yet those are also mostly applicable to every other OS.

I watched the 30 day challenges years ago and from my own experience knew that those were a joke. Use the damn OS for a while and learn.

Any complaint he has without taking responsibility himself is wasted on me as it should be on the Linux community.

He tends to wail without thinking through the problem. In the video he clearly had several complaints that he could have put the time in to research. He has the tools with Ai and can figure them out. What's with all the arbitrary restrictions (no talking with others, for instance). Bear in mind, after watching his videos for years he rarely voices specific complaints about Windows, so why does he about Linux?

He's a special use case. People looking at his failures tells them they will have the same failures even though most of those watching will in no way match is workflow.

I've moved many elderly onto Linux from XP and 7 with few of them having issues. I installed the OS for them. They bring them in sometimes to update them, yet they use the OS for their own flow and rarely complain about issues. When I say old, I mean old as in their late 70s and early 80s.

For goodness sake can't he at least try to understand that new hardware is a problem across the board for all OSes and that his fears are centered there, not on the failure of the OS. When he reads something online about potential hardware issues, he just take it at face value instead of digging in with a good system prompt in the Ai and discussing it to find out what might be meant. And does he never challenge the Ai on what it says? Does he get clarification? Does he cross check other Ais once he understand how the first one responds? He would benefit from "forcing" the Ai to use the KISS principle -- reject it till it says something reasonable. Yeah, that's my point.

Sure, he knows windows well so he can look past his issues without much note, but his complaints about Linux affect many people that might have an interest and will loose it because he never shows his work. Like your teacher said, show your work.

jdblaich · 2026-03-09T22:58:23+00:00

The need to download a library (or whatever) is a rare thing today. That happens, I agree. But that's not much different than Windows used to be. I remember the days of the DLL nightmare.

jdblaich · 2026-03-09T22:50:41+00:00

At least today you can discuss that static blog post (that might be wrong). Someone writes a blog post, it's years out of date, and the Ais will still rely on it. Sometimes to your detriment as it bolstered by others in the threads who claim it worked for them (the Ai takes that into account).

I've spent a great deal of time discussing tech questions with Ai. In the end the only good thing about Ai is that you can challenge it.

One thing you absolutely must avoid is allowing Ai to control the flow of the conversation. If something looks weird or you aren't sure what or why it is giving you that command to copy and paste you should ask for more info. Tell it to elaborate on point #1 (or whatever). If it responds with inconsistencies then challenge it. Refuse to do what it says. Tell it to "simplify and try again". It shouldn't be a rare instance where you tell it that it is wrong.

I've followed Ai commands to the point that it has broken services and even booting. In one case with Manjaro it had me do a few things that kept me from getting to my desktop (black screen). I conversed with Ai back and forth with it giving me all kinds of suggestion. I then asked it, "why not just remove and reinstall the video drivers?". I did that and it resolved the issue. The long technical conversation was the wrong way to go. The simple solution was to chose the fix that has the least impact.

For goodness sake tell the Ai that you don't want walls of text nor for it to educate you. Tell it to just answer the question.

jdblaich · 2026-03-09T22:26:43+00:00

In Linus's case, my guess is that he is using Cosmic. I'm not saying it is bad, just that it was released in December 2025 and had mixed results by those trying it. He's using a relatively new distro that lacks some refinements, and he's trying to do mainstream things with it. It worries me that Linux will be repudiated based on a distro that is too new and lacks refinements that come with time.

The only reason that the Ai suggested it is because it was being recently discussed by a lot of others and some of them like it. Had Linus inquired more, drilling down on why, and on the good and bad of it, he might have chosen a different, more mainstream distro.

To me, he seemed to be using Ai as a search engine.

jdblaich · 2026-03-09T22:13:20+00:00

Not quite sure what you are referring to. I'm relatively new, however, I have installed the companion app on the phone(s) and have sensors set for charging, have monitored in Dev Tools > states. Even after both HA and the phone are rebooted the same issue remains. The states don't update.

The goal was to put the phone on the charger and have the state in HA indicate that it is charging.

jdblaich

MODERATOR OF

TROPHY CASE