For something portable with a dGPU, I recommend the Asus ProArt px13. Works very well with Linux, including NixOS with the right config, with the community asusctl and supergfxctl. AMD, OLED screen, nVidia 4070 (4060 in the US, maybe we'll get 50xx next year). Downsides: the keyboard is not amazing, it comes with MediaTek WiFi, but is replaceable, and the SSD is 2230, which limits capacity. I haven't been able to fine-tune touchpad sensitivity in Wayland and I do get some screen flickering despite fiddling with some boot params and being on 6.17.x. Fewer constraints if you're willing to go 14-inch with the Zephyrus.
I tried some scanning on a Plustek 8300, which is supposed to be the fastest. The process is still extremely manual/slow and I don't think it's practical on a large scale. Many families who owned cameras in the 60s-70s-80s-90s will have potentially thousands of negatives to scan, but I don't see a solution that will automate that digitalization process.
Software could also use some improvement. Automating batch correction and clean up should be easier, IMO.
This really isn’t my area but it sounds like nothing is fast. DSLR may be fastest without just flat out hiring someone else to do it. But even with thousands of shots that would still take quite a lot of time.
And yeah, workflow is the thing that seems the worst. That seems like a great place to try to improve things to get a sale.
They don't need to "work" on Wayland support at all, all that work is being done by the FreeRDP project.
Also, sdl3-freerdp is the new Wayland client for FreeRDP is already available, and it works fine. You can just edit the shortcuts/bash scripts and replace xfreerdp with sdl3-freerdp and bam, you've got Wayland support.
PowerToys is not installed by default and neither is this Google app, obviously. It's absolutely reasonable that Google picks the most intuitive and common shortcut for an app launcher and if the user wants to maintain two or more launchers, it's up to them to configure non-conflicting keyboard shortcuts that are the most intuitive to them.
This is what got Lucovsky pushed out. He wanted to build OS from scratch and couldn't see past the technical argument and acknowledge the Product's team urgency to actually land something in the hands of customers. Meanwhile, he left a trail of toxicity that he doesn't even realize was there[0].
Interestingly, he was pulling the same bs at Google until reason prevailed and he got pushed out (but allowed to save face and claim he resigned willingly[1]).
Not trying to contradict anything you’re saying, which I agree is true for Microsoft and Dell machines, but to provide an anecdotal counter-example, the Asus Zephyrus, Flow and ProArt lines run pretty well on Linux provided you replace the Realtek WiFi.
One place to check is the nixos-hardware repo for machines with reasonable support.
> to provide an anecdotal counter-example, the Asus Zephyrus, Flow and ProArt lines run pretty well on Linux provided you replace the Realtek WiFi.
I should be very clear here: what I'm trying to caution people not to do is set people up for the expectation that random Windows laptops will run Linux well. Specific Windows laptops absolutely do run Linux well sometimes, just by virtue of using parts that are very well-supported and somehow having firmware that isn't full of 100,000 bugs. (I love Framework but there are some occasional issues i have with my Framework 16 that really seem like they can only be issues with the firmware rather than Linux.)
That said, I still think you should consider tempering what you tell people, especially people you don't know well. The vast majority of users are not the type of people to disassemble their laptop and replace the WiFi card. And while I don't doubt what you're saying is true, I also think it's important to note that laptops vary a lot from SKU to SKU and revision to revision; the vendors typically don't support or test Linux, so there's absolutely no reason they wouldn't break it in a minor revision of hardware or firmware, either. Telling people that ThinkPads generally work well on Linux isn't necessarily unfair (They usually do, even today) but it's not as much of a sure thing as everyone portrays it, there are exceptions. And also, when you say they run "pretty well", you may have more reasonable expectations for what "pretty well" means than the average person. For one thing, I've found that the average person simply lacks the creativity to imagine the ways in which operating system compatibility issues can manifest. For another, these minor usability problems can profoundly impact how one uses their computer. For example, if sleep/resume works 99% of the time, that's actually not great. What happens in the remaining 1% of the time, you lose all of your work unexpectedly? Does your laptop melt inside your bag? Maybe, if you are profoundly unlucky, it could even light your damn house on fire. Of course, Windows and Windows laptops have plenty of problems with sleep/resume these days too with no Linux involved, but I still believe strongly that users who have never experienced broken sleep/resume will have a really bad time here. And again, since these laptops only support Windows, any random kernel or BIOS update could kick things into a bad state. (Immutable OSes will at least save you from having to guess, but I use NixOS and sometimes my intermittent hardware issues are really hard to pinpoint, which is observable for anyone who looks at the history of kernel versions on some of my less Linux-friendly devices.)
I think people evangelizing open source and Linux are very well-meant and often times manage to really help people escape the abusive relationship they have with Microsoft, and I want it to continue. I just want people to be careful with how they message Linux on laptops. If you are really sure someone will be highly tolerant of working through problems, maybe you need to caution them less. But, for other people, I just think it's better to be very careful and fully not recommend laptop vendors that don't support Linux. These laptops don't work well with Windows by accident!
Can confirm that Yubikey-like devices prevent the M1 MBP from fully sleeping, which eventually depletes the battery. My company's (big tech) IT department reached out to Apple's corp support and eventually got confirmation from Apple that they decided to close the issue w/o fix. Something to do with their USB controller's firmware, if memory serves.
Removing Yubikey before (or after) closing the lid completely prevents total battery drain for me.
There's an active community around MiniDisc these days. r/minidisc and Discord are the places to check. People have been building replacement gumstick Li ion batteries with reasonable quality and there are replacement OLED displays for RH1 and RH10 Sony players. Mechanisms will eventually fail, I suppose, but for now you can still enjoy the format.
On the software end, web.minidisc.wiki has come a long way and there are even projects to expand the functionality of player firmware. Cool hobby, if you're into that.
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