Microsoft support for Window 10 ended on October 14, except for those who are willing to jump through some additional hoops, which I am not. I found relatively cheap Windows 11 systems to replace the Windows 10 boxes my wife and oldest son had been using. My own two Windows 10 systems also had Ubuntu and Debian Linux installed, so I deleted Windows 10 from them. They are perfectly useable with Linux. I am writing this on one of them now.
Following up on Cory Doctorow on Apple, Doctorow has written again about Apple in Plenty of room at the bottom (of the tech stack), the key point being:
Apple’s security model works well. To the extent that Apple is both benevolent and competent, it makes products that are safe and reliable. But this model fails horribly, because any time Apple decides to trade off its customers’ privacy, safety, or utility for its own priorities, those customers are rendered defenseless by Apple’s total control:
A few years ago I ran across some discussions of GPS:
Now there are similar concernes about AI:
Following up on Replacing an old HP computer for $35: Debian 13 is now out, so I deleted the Debian 12 installation on that machine and replaced it with a fresh installation of the new version. The first thing I did was download debian-13.0.0-amd64-netinst.iso and put it on a USB stick with Rufus. Installing from this failed, with a message that some obscure file was corrupt. I don’t know if this was a file on the iso or one that had been downloaded in the installation process. A second attempt also failed.
My backup desktop system, an old HP SFF box, failed. It was running Windows 10, Ubuntu 24.04, and Debian 12. Somehow it stopped booting correctly. GRUB would not show all the systems. My boot repair drive failed to fix it. I replaced the SATA SDD drive, but that did not help. So I replaced it with another SFF desktop for a cost of $35.
I recycled an old HP Laptop and replaced it with a Dell Latitude 7310, purchased from Repowered. 16GB RAM (can be upgraded to 32GB), 512GB NVMe drive, Windows 11 Pro. I configured Windows to my needs. Next, install Linux (Ubuntu 24.04 LTS)
A couple weeks ago I saw this DEC VT102 from about 1980 at Free Geek Twin Cities. It brought back memories.
I installed Ubuntu 24.04 on my Dell desktop. This went well, but after installation I noticed the same problem with Thunderbird that I had seen on an Ubuntu upgrade on an old HP desktop. When I wrote before about not seeing the issue on a fresh installation it probably meant my testing was inadequate. This is a big problem: I am not willing to give up my multi-level email folders.
I finally upgraded my “daily driver” system, an HP ProDesk 600 G1 SFF, from Ubuntu 22.04 to Ubuntu 24.04. The process went well, but I did have to do some cleanup work afterwards and not everything is working as it should..
I am continuing to work on my new (for me) Dell Inspiron 3670. I have now upgraded the RAM to 32 GB, replacing the 2 8 GB DIMMs with 2 new 16 GB DIMMs. I ordered the memory from Crucial, which has an “Upgrade my computer” button on its home page. With this you can look up exactly what DRAM and SSD upgrades are apppropriate for your particular system. Physically installing the new DIMMs was a little tricky simply because of where the memory slots are placed on the motherboard, but I managed. Since I am now at the maximum possible memory I will not have to do this again, unless one of DIMMs fails.
From Hilbert Space to Dilbert Space, and beyond 