Ah yes, the modern day equivalent of recording radio broadcasts to magnetic tape. Made a few mixtapes that way myself. They were absolute garbage quality and I never listen to them anymore, but it was an interesting exercise and my only option for some stuff at the time.

Now I just buy as directly from the artist as I can for things that are rare enough that they are difficult to pirate.

Beginner tutorials exist. Have you even tried looking? Linux has better documentation than anything I’ve seen in any other OS. Man pages, help files, and commented configuration files galore in just about every single Linux distro without any Internet needed, but it sounds like you never even bothered to look for them.

Sure, assholes online exist in Linux communities, but they are EVERYWHERE. We’ve got a couple right right here. That doesn’t exactly distinguish FOSS communities from any other.

Generalizations about all of FOSS based on your limited experience with a few distros is just asinine. FOSS is way more than an operating system.

Expecting a machine to hold your hand through your learning is such a weird form of entitlement and an especially weird distinction to make since no other operating system does that to the level you expect either.

Corporations pay for support services. The code is free (as in speech). No one ever claimed that the support was also (or even should be) free. Microsoft support is a joke. Apple support is mostly just a sales scheme. Linux support forums might be hostile to entitled noobs looking for a handout and a quick fix, but they are fucking heros when given a chance to help those who put in the effort to help themselves.

No, the title is a homophone for a slang term for ejaculation.

They knew what they were doing. Obviously this is (I assume) just more of the same step-family kink fad nobody asked for.

Yeah, the touch screen is awful, but just try finding a decent induction range without one and without spending twice as much for the privilege. (It seems that induction ranges are the most popular for this unfortunate design trend.)There’s not really any choices out there. You can lock the screen, which is great for cleaning. Just don’t do that while you’re using the oven or range because it turns everything off and cancels the bake.

I do love everything else about my induction range though. Cold searing stuff is faster and easier to get right. I can bring a pot of water to a rolling boil in about 4 minutes.

That’s the joke.

It’s a damn shame that we haven’t built a microwave that actually listens to the pops and stops when the pops slow, just like every bag of popcorn instructs you to do. We’ve got gun shot detectors; you’d think we could build a chip to analyze popping popcorn.

Let this be a lesson to you then. Checking the logs should be your first troubleshooting step, not installing a variety of distros until one “just works”. Good luck.

Chopsticks. Use them. It takes a little practice, but they are perfect for snacking, especially popcorn. Cheetos are easiest of the chips, but others are possible. No more residue on your finger tips, or the backs of your hands from reaching into the bag. I also switched to chopsticks for things like salads (fruit or vege variety), noodles, and getting olives and such out of jars. Even a good stew or chili can be eaten with chopsticks and a spoon. Now I just need to get better at using chopsticks with my nondominant hand.

I’m not biased and I’m not picking a side, but there is a lot of whataboutism is this thread and I stand by my stance that it is a weak argument and a logical fallacy.

Whataboutism isn’t a very convincing argument.

Just organize your library properly and pretty much every software will manage it better. There are options for organizing and renaming them mostly automatically, like EastTAG or filebot. Some people use Sonarr and Radarr to organize shows and movies, but those are probably overkill for you. The various *arrs will be more useful if you’re consuming new media through a server hosting Plex or Jellyfin. Kodi is also a waste if the library isn’t already meticulously organized and you don’t need a 10 foot interface.

If you’re only consuming on desktop and you insist on being disorganized, then why even bother with anything other than VLC? It runs on Linux, Windows, iOS, and Android.

This is one of those questions that is easy to scoff at initially as a stupid question, but really it’s not. Especially once you learn about wombat poops.

Those are the kinds of inconsistencirs the GOP use to accuse you of voter fraud, even if you correct it. Don’t be surprised if some GOP busybody adds your name to a list of voter registrations to purge. Whenever they talk about voting irregularities and a rigged election, this is exactly the kind of voter disenfranchisement that they are trying to accomplish. Hell, question enough votes and you can get the votes of an entire region thrown out. You don’t need any proof to make the accusations, then they massive shit sandwich gets dropped in the lap of a few underpaided and understaffed people to substantiate. I recommend you vote as early as possible and follow up to make sure your vote gets counted.

Yes, I’ve done almost exactly this while traveling. You can even carry around a couple variously configured sd cards for different use cases. I had one with jellyfin for sharing locally and also Kodi for direct HDMI connection to TVs. There is a in app on Android for jellyfin called findroid that allows offline copies from the media server, which allowed me to not need the thing powered the entire time I wanted to watch something on my phone, just long enough to download it. Adding samba shares adds a other layer of accessibility. I had another SD Card with video game ROMs for retro gaming, but this one got left at home because it requires controllers and I didn’t think I’d use it that much. I had another with “little backup box” installed for automatically backing up my photos and videos after a day out exploring with my camera.

I used a Raspberry pi 5 for all of this, running from a battery backup, because I didn’t really need a keyboard once I had remote connections to my phone sorted out. Pick a rugged case and you case just toss it in your bag of chargers. It took up about as much space as a pack of cigarettes. Another option would be the Raspberry Pi 400, built into a keyboard. A little bulkier, but maybe more resilient in the face of technical difficulties.

Oh yeah, I totally support the local copy. That will save you in times up hardware failure or fuck ups. I could just never keep up with the maintenance and kind of gave up making automatic backups and syncing. But reorganizing often translates to integrating deletions into rsync or whatever syncing protocol you use, and that has caused me headaches and heartaches.

Yeah, that was a typo. Thanks, I’ll fix it.

I have a very similar setup to yours, a relatively large music library around 1.7TB of mostly flac files on my server. I’m able to organize these files locally from my laptop, which at various times has run either OSX, various GNU/Linuxes, or Windows. However I do not bother pushing the files themselves back and forth over the network.

Even if I did, I wouldn’t automate the syncing, I’d only run it manually after I’d done my organizing with Picard for that day. After all, it the organization with Picard isn’t automated, why should the syncing be? I’d probably use rsync for this.

In actual practice I do this: Connect to my server from my laptop using ssh, forwarding X. Run Picard on the actual server through this remote connection. Picard runs just fine over ssh. Opening a browser from a Picard tag for occasional Musicbrainz.org stuff is a little slower but works. I would then use a tmux or screen session to run the rsync command when I’m done with Picard for the day for syncing to a backup if necessary.

I don’t really bother keeping a whole copy of my music collection locally on my laptop or phone though, since It’s been bigger than is practical for a long time. Managing multiple libraries and keeping the two in sync turned into such a hassle that I was spending more time organizing than actually listening (or making mixtapes/playlists). To listen to my music locally I’ve used either Plex or Jellyfin, sometimes MPD (like when my server was directly connected to my stereo receiver), or just shared the folder via samba and NFS.

Setting up Sonarr and Radar with docker isn’t all that complex. If you set up Prowlarr as well then you can still get the instant search and download aspect you mention except you can search ALL the good websites at once and (most importantly for my stress level) avoid all the bullshit ads and malware you’ve got to worry about blocking while browsing those sites through the web. Sonarr is perfect for following any show, not just those you might binge watch. Topical shows like SNL and last week tonight get picked up automatically. Long term favorites with unpredictable release cycles (looking at you Doctor Who) get snapped up when they’re most popular and download super fast. Cleaning up old seasons to clear out space is as simple as navigating a web page. Both radarr and sonarr can connect to other services like that.tv so less tech savvy household members can add a show or movie to their watchlist and it will automatically get added, searched, downloaded, and hosted without any extra interaction from me. You can even set up profiles so that certain lists meet quality standards, so for example the kids cartoons aren’t downloaded at the same high a quality as the adult shows.

My point is this, make the switch to automating the searching and downloading, not so that you can hoarde everything, but so that you can’t stop spending as much time being the home video librarian and more time enjoying it. On more than one occasion I’ve been out with friends and somebody mentions a movie they liked, I’ve taken a minute to add it to my list, and the movie is ready and waiting on my Plex (and/or Jellyfin) before I get home.

I mean, that’s fucked up and hilarious. I’m a dirty omnivore and those places are no more appetizing to me. Those cuts at the all you can eat Brazilian places SUCK.

But surprisingly, when I want a predictable vegetable side while I’m traveling, I go to a steakhouse. Every other place seems to serve either microwaved bag veggies, fried bullshit, or something sad smothered in sauce. Go to a steakhouse and I can get a rare well seasoned aged filet and two steamed fresh vegetable sides plus a salad. The only reliable vegan places I’ve found are Indian, which isn’t bad, but is often not really to my taste. Obviously I’m no vegan, but I think it’s fair to say I love plant based foods even more as long as they’re not fake meat, fake cheese, or overly spiced mush. In a meat centric region that’s a hard palette to satisfy sometimes.