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Cake day: June 8th, 2023

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  • When was the last 4yr window on a computer? I think the ati 2011 15” mbp got dropped fast af but thats the last real short one I remember. I haven’t dealt extensively with the touchbar models though.

    The m1 air looks to be another 2012 mbp 12”. It would surprise me if they cut it off at 7 years. Although that decision seems to have been driven by the enterprise install base and who knows if that’s still what it once was.

    I think the reason why mobile os support windows are apples thing on computers is because they don’t have a separate business line. Iirc xps used to be dells enthusiast brand and now it’s part of the business line.

    Thinking more about it, the core line of processors was a real stumble for intel because they were really good and lasted forever and manufacturers had to start pushing updates to fix realtek and qualcomm chip problems or get blamed for shit not working or being supported.

    Also, this is kinda tangential because the op is asking about firmware support and hardware availability and firmware support is not as important on macs and they have incredible second hand hardware markets.




  • The Apple support window is pretty predictable. You get about seven years from device release to no os updates.

    It used to be that they didn’t talk about it and it was kind of a “he who has eyes, let him see” situation.

    Of course, we’re talking hardware here so that’s sort of neither here nor there.

    The enterprise dell experience is indeed very good all around. I’d even include hp in the pile if I had any experience with em. Their scopes used to be decent.




  • Generally if you want long support windows you go for big boring brands’ simplest business class laptops. Or Apple.

    Small companies an make a commitment to support, but they often have neither the money, customer base or manpower to follow through when the going gets tough.

    I have found that popularity is a better predictor of spare part availability than any commitment from a company of any size. When they stop selling parts, there’s always the second hand market. When that dries up there’s always third party parts.

    Firmware updates are one of the places that dell, Lenovo and Apple shine. Because of their customers expectations they tend to release new updates and drivers as functionality expectations or security conditions change.




  • Slow walking compliance is normal. It keeps assets liquid and processes & people in place as long as possible before making changes. It also prevents the cost of changing back and forth if a new rule is struck down before its final date.

    What will happen often is that a compliant procedure will be developed as soon as possible, but no changes will be made until absolutely necessary. That gives the organization maximum time to figure out other routes of compliance, fight the rule and continue at pace before they change.



  • I’m glad you got it sorted with dd.

    One thing people don’t often realize about dd is that it copies all the data from one drive to the other, including uuids that were written when the old drives filesystem were created.

    For that reason it excels at cloning one’s boot disk, because when the old drive gets removed from the pc, the clone drives os says at some point during the boot process “okay, let’s mount the filesystem with uuid ABC123 at /“ and it works.

    Dd is also not the best tool for cloning disk that you intend to leave hooked up because if you do it’ll put the poor host os in a “I’m seein’ double here, four spidermen!” Type situation.



  • For raid: that’s how raid and any kind of real time parity schemes like zfs work. You make the arrangement of devices first and then put the filesystem on them.

    For stuff like snapraid where parity isn’t distributed across all devices you can just add it to a jbod like you want.

    Welcome to Linux, everything is a permissions error. Su <username>, touch, the facl tools and namei are your first line of defense!

    Most all fans are a standard size and connector type. Sizes are in mm on a side (of the square housing), connectors are in number of pins. If you can’t look up the fan size(80, 140, etc) and connector type (3-pin, 4 pin), next time you take the unit apart measure the fan with a ruler and count the pins on its connector.

    Then you know what quieter one to buy.

    E: there’s a Reddit thread where ppl say the fan is 92mm and the motherboard supports 4-pin but only has two installed. That means that despite the device supporting 4-pin fan speed control they only installed enough pins to run the fan at full blast, so even the quietest fan ever would be only as quiet as if it were running wide open. You can pop in a 4-pin header if you’re handy with a soldering iron or you can use a usb to 4-pin dongle to attach a 4-pin fan.

    If you want even more you can populate an additional header on the motherboard and use this 3d printed 120mm fan holder with it.

    Good luck!


  • Not really.

    Even with lvm/sub volumes the benefit is that you could ostensibly keep one home directory between two different distributions you switch booting between. The better solution there would be to have a rsync backup and sync it after booting or shutting down or periodically because then you have a backup at least.

    For distro hopping it’s not that great because who’s to say you’re getting the “good” experience with some random new distro when it overrides its defaults meant to be nicey-nice with some other stuff from ~/.gnome/gtk2/gtk3/desktop/widgets/clock/fonts/ttf/arial?

    Just back your stuff up, rsync selectively from that backup and use the same filesystem for home as you do for /.

    It’s the same thing as asking if you should put a lift in your homes attached garage. If you have to ask if it’s good idea and not just cool, then the answer is no.