BananaTrifleViolin

Thrustmaster makes the Eswap controller which are modular. You can change the positions of the sticks and buttons on both sides I believe. I dont know how they work wirh linux though.

https://www.thrustmaster.com/products/eswap-s-pro-controller/

The integration is Microsoft's monopoly behaviour which anti-trust organisation no longer put a stop to. There are alternatives but they struggle to match the level of integration Microsoft can achieve owning and making all of the office suite.

However European local and regional government have been moving over to Office alternatives such as Collabora, Onlyoffice and Libreoffice. Collabora & Onlyoffice are particularly designed for online use and collaboration.

There are also alternatives to the Exchange email system, with Nextcloud one of a few that can either be bought as a service or self deployed by organisations and individuals.

The biggest benefits are total control and privacy of data, plus better cost. Microsoft clients don't generally get any of this, with the increasing push to integrate online services and try to forcably up-sell by bundling in stuff customers don't need but have to buy to get the things they want or need. Microsoft rely on inertia and vendor lock-in; once you become dependent on their services it makes it seem impossible to get out and move to a new system.

Yeah likely because Elon Musk stripped out the Lidar from tesla cars to save money and relies on cameras only. A tech bro who thinks he knows better than engineers.

I wouldn't want to be anywhere near a self driving tesla.

Seems reasonable to me. Open Source is seen as virtuous and noble, but then big companies take that to mean they can leach off it while making huge profits.

It's very similar to the attitude to tax - companies avoid it aggressively, yet they use roads, benefit from schools, hospitals, rubbish collection, energy infrastructure and national security.

Maybe it's time for an ethos shift in the open source community. For example switching to licenses that stipulate if used commercially at certains scale, fees need to be paid.

So to summarise the challenges the industry is facing:

• Tariffs on Aluminium - Trump
• Tariffs on Solar imports - Trump
• Sudden loss of federal grants that covered 30% of the cost for installation (was due to run til 2030 now slashed) - Trump
• Slashing of the fees owners get for selling money to the grid by 75% - Oil industry lobbying / Trump
• Removal of investment credits which have specifically been stripped from solar but not other energy investments - Trump

To call this "macro economic" issues is bizarre. All of this is due to government policy and actions. It's also notable that the rest of the world's solar industry is not collapsing. Trump.and the republicans are selling out US consumers to prop up the oil industry and tax cuts for the rich.

Part of this is just that the socially conservative pressure to fit in has eased. Time was you had to be "religious" to fit in to communities and it was seen as part of American identity.

I find it hard to believe 75% of Americans are religious. In the UK 37% identify as non religious. 45% identify as Christian yet churches have emptied our and most young people only end up in one for marriages or funerals. People say they're Christian but I have no doubt a large chunk of those people are just ticking a box on a census form as it's part of their identity.

PCs are generally based around the X86 chip architecture which is an open standard. PCs are basically modular and lots of manufacturers make components that are interchangeable, creating a huge variety of possible hardware. Hardware suppliers also sell to both big manufacturing companies and individuals. It's therefore in their interest to distribute their drivers freely even if closed source. If hardware breaks it can be replaced and the PC keeps going, and some components can be kept going for years as a result as people dot have to throw the whole machine out everything something breaks or becomes obsolete.

Mobile devices are closed standards. They use a more limited range of off the shelf components which are deeply integrated into a device, and the hardware suppliers provide their drivers to the device manufacturer or the device manufacturer builds their own drivers and custom version of the os. Hardware can have very long retail lives selling for years and still being functional, so the manufacturers have an incentive to keep drivers available and even update them.

It means mobile devices are more locked down, and the hardware drivers harder to come by. This makes it hard to build custom OS for them and therefore when the device comes to the end of its support from the maker there is limited options to keep it running securely.

It's effectively a type of planned obscelence that keeps the mobile industry going. Manufacturers stop supporting old devices (because it provides no income) and then consumers have to buy new ones as no one can provide the security patches to keep them secure.

So for mobile there is nothing to force Android or IOS to be kept up to date for old devices. The money is in new devices, and for Android manufacturers are responsible for the mobile device anyway. While for PC it's in Microsofts interests to keep updating and keeping devices secure via Windows becuase devices have long lifespans and old components can be in the PC ecosystem for decades. Similarly Linux is able to support hardware for a long time because drivers are more freely available and long lifespans to hardware incentivise people to put the effort in to write open drivers when they're not there.

Microsoft is trying to force an upgrade cycle at the moment with Win 11 though. And the laptop industry ia more like the mobile industry than the desktop pc industry with more propriety devices and locked down hardware.

We use it at work because it's intergrated into Office. I suspect that's why most people use it.

Typical Microsoft tactic for domination - bundle it in, integrate it and then people won't try other stuff. Anti-trust / Anti-monopolies laws used to be used to fine and stop this, but now they can do whatever they want.

There is quite a range of devices out there now with varying capabilites. Things like the Onion Omega2+, Oranage Pi, and more.

Raspberry Pi also remains good. While the Pi5 is expensive and more powerful - raspberry pi also makes the Pi Zero boards which are cheaper less capable boards which are closer to what the original raspberry Pi was but newer hardware.

I'd say the Pi5 is a heading more towards a full PC like device (hence the comparisons to cost and capability minipcs pepple are making in thia thread). But there remain plenty of lower spec machines out there now similar to the original cheap Raspberry Pi concept. And we've had high inflation recently - to some extent the cost perception avtually reflects money being worth less than it was and buying less for $10 or $20.

Laptops are not generally designed to run like that with a closed lid. Heat dissipation is designed around the idea the laptop is open and some of it is through the keyboard surface. The lid closed would change that.

Systems can of course be setup to power off the display but for server/service uses open laptops may not be efficient space wise.

Having said that if the scenario is low power use the heat dissipation may not be a major issue. But if there is an unremovable battery i'd still be concerned about heat dissipation with the lid closed and even just the battery itself regardless of heat dissipiation.

Low power and arm architecture are big differentiators between Pi and laptops.

I totally agree recycle laptops where possible, but they're generally noisier and less energy efficient plus the battery degrades over time and is a fire risk.

They're not necessairly a good fit for always-on server or service type uses comparef to a small board like Raspberry Pi. But a cheap or free second hand laptop is definitely good for tweaking, testing and trying our projects.

Ignore the drama, if you like the distro then use it. All the big distros are influenced by the companies that use them but should a distro make a substantial.change you don't like you can move.

However I would always have the mentality that you may one day want to move or reinstall so its good to be ready.

As a minimum its a good idea from the outset to ensure data you would want to keep and migrate is kept somewhere secure and separate to the linux OS itself. That might be having a separate home partition and root partition (not essential but its made migeation for me much easier). However regardless of that always do have robust backups of all your home folder data anyway.

If you do end up tweaking and getting more technical its also a good habit if you tweak your system files (like fstab files etc) to try and keep backup copies of those away from the root folder structure should you need to rebuild your system with another distro or even a fresh install. I also even save copies of webpages where i got specific tips and tricks to achive things i wanted so i can redo it easier in the future - has saved me a lot of time when i do make major changes.

Another good thing to backup from time to time can be your /opt folder. Some software you install may end up there and can contain custom files (esp if you needed to do something manually or customise it - Jellyfin for me sits in /opt and i always fins it a bit annoying to set up between distros - ffmpeg, firewall and file permissions are recurrent issues for me every time).

Finally I'd suggest it can be good to backup a list of your flatpak packages and system installed packages into text files from time to time (this is easily done but how differs between distros). This can be a helpful reference to rebuild your preferred set up when starting from afresh with a new distro or reinstall. You'd eventually reinstall everything you need without that but i've found such lists have saved me a lot of time.

A distro change or reinstall could be years away but your future self will appreciate it if you have regualar backups of all thet stuff - makes reinstalling or migrating to a new distro a doddle. Also it gives you freedom to do it whenever you want - if you know its already all there its far less daunting.

How much you should do depends on how deep ypu get into twealing your system. A minimum is bakc up your home folder / personal files, anything more depends on what you end up getting up to with your system.