Hutch

Powerbeats Pro have hooks over the ears and only get used when a wire would be intrusive such as workouts. I don’t much like them but they are hard to lose. They’re notorious for not charging properly and worked much better on Apple than Android, but at least I still both left and right buds.

Earbuds are worse, it’s always one that’s dead because it didn’t sit properly in the charging case.

My experience: via iPhone 8 + Apple adaptor, it couldn’t drive big cans, and even for earbuds they lose significant volume. My phone has the 3.5mm jack, and it can deafen me. This matters more when hooking up to sound systems because it raises the noise floor.

It’s better than nothing, but it’s not good. I don’t know about the USB-C alternatives though - I can only hope they are better than the ‘lightning’ connector ones.

No headphone jack, no sale. I have three hard criteria:

headphone socket usb-c charging expandable storage

I’ll stick with my Sony. Two-out-of-three isn’t good enough.

From memory it has a different layout in /etc, /use, and /opt that kept tripping me up. Simple things seemed harder. I do a fair amount in older versions of Java that caused problems. It’s been a while though, so things have likely changed.

I must have played with SUSE at some point, these words bring back horrors I’d long forgotten.

I can find faults in any of them, but mostly hate working with Redhat/CentOS/Fedora. Strongly prefer Debian over Ubuntu, and I strongly prefer Gentoo over Arch. SUSE is an unknown, not sure about that one.

I have a fondness for BSD, if that matters.

I know I’m probably in the minority here but… I’m a desk jockey.

I don’t use Lemmy on a handheld. I didn’t use Reddit that way either. The web interface works well enough for me, or rather whatever lemmy.ca uses is good when set to vaporwave-light. Try the different themes, some are better than others.

The pagination though… it’s a little short for my taste but I prefer it over doomscrolling.

I use ChromeOS because I use Google Workspace. It gives me a cheap portable machine for work, and for meetings I rather carry that than a £2000 overspec’d heavy 15" laptop. It’s the cheapest of the cheap, and it can run Linux in a VM with Firefox. It has fantastic battery life. I also run Linux on the laptop, and on a Desktop PC, as well as servers.

In my mind, ChromeOS works. It’s literally a browser with a screen, a keyboard, and some deep-rooted privacy concerns.

As for Windows, that I don’t understand the need in 2023. I switched to Debian, and immediately saw better thermals, less fan noise, faster boot, longer battery life, and all sort of other improvements. Given Linux/Windows/MacOS/DOS/iOS/Android are all effectively launchers for apps and provide broadly the same services I don’t really care which, but I will choose the ones that make me most productive.

I think I’ll stay on Mastodon. I don’t like the Firefish UI. I haven’t tried Akkoma yet.

Whilst gnome 3 wasn’t for we it did have charm and I prefer it over Windows or KDE. I’m using xfce4, and really like Window Maker and CDE, but I get why these wouldn’t work well on ultra wide displays. It’s all personal preference and finding what works, which is part of my love for Linux.