I’ve been daily driving Linux Mint for about 4 years. It’s usable and stable with standard software packages and can also be tweaked in the Linux way if you so need it.
Another person mentioned Ubuntu if coming from Mac. I haven’t considered it before but they’re probably right.
I was using Mac at home, but Windows at work. So moving to Mint was easy.
Ubuntu was OK on high performance hardware but when they introduced snaps nothing worked so I moved to Mint.
I thought the same originally. Then after speaking with the online chat and realising Wayne was a Queenslander, I bought one.
There’s enough people in the Matrix and Telegram channels now to know there is a real phone. Even look at the GitHub activity. It’s busy.
Yeah it is. I have the Signal app installed in Android, but I only use it to initiate the Signal setup. Then use the desktop flatpak in FuriOS as my daily driver. You can change the look of it to be similar to the mobile app and a recent change (like a week ago) has made resizing the contact list easier from a touch screen rather than having to use a mouse the first time.
The Telegram and Matrix channels have been great for people sharing tips like this.
This was the basis of how FuriLabs managed to get such good Android app integration. Obviously they’ve forked it [0] and heavily modified it, but the user experience they’ve created with this to allow Android apps on a Linux phone has been great.
Look on the bright side. Locking bootloaders has the potential to break the duopoly by driving more people towards Linux phones or other unlocked devices. The more people that move, the stronger those communities get. I've been daily driving a Furi for 3 months now and am glad to have options outside of the duopoly.
Why not consider a smart phone that has good hardware, supports VoLTE and doesn't use Android or Apple? I've been daily driving a Furi FLX1 for over a month now. You can make it as smart or dumb as you like and you can even use it to charge another phone!
After looking what alternative mobile OSs lately, there seem to be a few around. The ones that have appealed to me so far are Ubuntu Touch, Mobian and FuriOS. I see there will be a Ubuntu based version here soon. What I can’t understand though, is why don’t these really clever people work together on fewer solutions with similar end goals? Is it that it’s difficult to manage opinions and decisions? Or that people don’t check the market before developing alternatives? Or something else?
I am curious about a couple of things to do with this project. Given the solar panels will cover about 30,000 acres of land [0], and a factory is being built to manufacture the panels (because there are so many), how will decommissioning of the solar farm be done at end of life? How does one process that many panels in an environmentally friendly way? It sounds like another factory will need to be built to process the waste.
I hope that the decommissioning of this kind of solar farm is better managed thant the likes of the Northern Endeavour FPSO, where Woodside offloaded it to a small company to dodge the decommissioning costs of the field, leaving the taxpayer to foot the bill[1].
The problem with long distance AC is the reactive power component caused by the capacitance, and the voltage rise caused by the Ferranti effect.
The reactive component has significant impact on the generation equipment and grids. It also causes the Ferranti effect, where the voltage along the cable rises. This can make managing the voltage within the cable difficult because at no load, the load end has a higher voltage than the source, and when loaded, the middle of the cable has a higher voltage than both ends.
During stable operation these effects can be managed with Statcoms, shunt reactors and voltage regulation tap changers. However during transient operation you will be relying upon the static protective devices such as surge arrestors, depending on how large the transient is.
DC transmission does not suffer from the same reactive power component and has less losses, but it does require large convertor stations at both ends.
Either a horticulturalist/permaculturist or an industrial electrician.
Both are and will be required skills for the foreseeable future (next 200 years or so).
Knowing how to grow food and maintain a healthy environment is becoming a lost skill. “Grounding” has science now saying it’s a good thing for your blood, heart and brain (don’t have link on hand but when connected to ground scientists have found blood physically changes and can be seen in microscope).
Electricians are usually a licensed trade. This makes it more protected but also makes you more useful.
You can branch into engineering later if you wish, and you usually make for a better engineer cause you know a 630mm^2 cable doesn’t fit in a 20mm gland.
Substation automation based on IEC61850 is everywhere and more common. It consists of servers, gateways, IEDs (which also need programming), Ethernet, VLANS, switches etc. so you get a technology knowledge base you can relate to other areas of yours, or your friends and families life.
You can also learn to program SCL files using python or other such tools. Get bored of big power? Switch over to instrument and controls.
There will always be a need for plants, food and power. Why not set yourself up for success those ways?
(Oh! And you get paid to train when you’re an apprentice and you don’t end up with student debt or university fees)
I use Home Assistant and a mixture of Z-wave and wifi devices. The way I choose wifi devices is by finding which ones can have Tasmota firmware flashed to them.
For example, in Australia, many hardware stores sell “Grid Connect” devices. This is a cloud solution for the likes of Arlec. However, most of these devices can be flashed with Tasmota. This removes the cloud and keeps everything in house using MQTT. Security is WPA2 and TLS. I run my IOT devices on a separate VLAN and use 2.4Ghz network as it seems to have more coverage and is more reliable.
Here is a list of >2000 devices which can take the Tasmota firmware:
Metal-halide HID lamps are best for this purpose. They have the best colour rendition of all lighting and they come in different sizes and colour temperatures.
My pick for a bright daylight would be about 6000K colour temp and I’d just throw some fittings in a room then walk outside at mid day to determine how many watts Id need to satisfy.
Bonus of these is you can get coloured lamps with more awesomer colours than LEDs.BLV is one manufacturer.
Second bonus is if you use a grow lamp in your setup, it’ll also help reduce the effects of SAD. They use the same fittings.
Oh, and remember diffusion is the key for comfortable indoor use.
cplusplusfellow if your contacts transition to the likes of Signal [0], you can then message from phone or computer. They have software for Windows, Mac and Linux.