I had bought a new PC in 2022 to revisit Linux after my initial troubles a quarter century prior.
The fan noise of the (Dell XPS 8950) computer never let me use it stationed next to me for long. It went on a shelf in the rack cabinet as a Wake-on-LAN (WoL) remote access (RDP) Windows OS device. RDP on desktop-focused Linux distros did not work in a typical headless setup i.e. without both the dummy display plug and sacrilegious autologin user. The PC in any event seemed wastefully underutilized considering I have reservations about the use of capable hardware (24 virtual CPU cores) for trivial purposes and that made me both uncomfortable with tolerating its power draw (Intel i9-12900) and resistant to the grating noise.
I was recently intrigued by the Type 1 hypervisor Proxmox how-to, and that opened up a new world of PCIe passthrough that included concurrent use of both the Windows 11 OS using passthrough with the NVIDIA 3060 Ti, to deliver an equivalent experience over RDP to that of the OS running on bare metal as it was previously, and one or more virtual machines (VMs) of Debian or any other Linux distro used for servers without a local GUI using the virtualized on-board Intel graphics.
I could somewhat justify the existence and power draw with the PC being productive 24×7, the on-demand ability to remotely fire up Windows OS as needed, and while allowing me to run experimental VMs alongside. Next was getting the PC to run quieter yet cooler, for which the quickest fix was replacing both 120 mm chassis fans with Noctua fans.
I tend to use hardware that was cutting edge two years ago, usually over-spec for the job but running at or below spec for reliability, so burned-in and with mature Linux kernel support by the time it is deployed. This one was especially new since it underwent a motherboard change in its first year.
This is the kind of productivity I have always wanted, access to multiple machines over RDP and SSH, running in virtual desktops on my Windows on arm portable, that I can swipe through, snapshot, rollback, backup and restore.
The most significant change in CPU architecture in almost 4 decades of computing for me comes in the form of the Qualcomm (remember Eudora Pro?) made SoC, Snapdragon X Elite.
I had always wondered about RISC, having read about DEC Alpha, MIPS, Sun Sparc and Intel iA64. None of those, if at all attainable, ran consumer operating systems. My first non-x86 experience was with the Apple M1 Pro-based MacBook Pro in 2021, which by 2024 had software support to virtualize Windows on arm OS. I was amazed at the smooth x86 Windows OS apps compatibility and decided to go bare metal with the Samsung Book4 Edge.
I am quite certain after 6 weeks that this is a great choice for right now since it has WiFi7 and, as a Copilot+ PC, early access to Windows 11 24H2 features; else the Samsung Book4 Ultra with Intel Meteor Lake and WiFi 6E [or upcoming Book5 360 with Intel Lunar Lake and WiFi7] would have served me better for native software availability.
I bought a PC in the Summer of 2022 after 15 years, with the intention of re-exploring Linux on a separate SSD. The hardware being secure boot capable with Microsoft Windows 11 OS and having an NVIDIA graphics card, narrowed the choice of Linux distribution literally to what “sort of works” in that combination, as I write this in early 2023.
I started with the üniversal choice – Ubuntu seemed to install fine including the proprietary NVIDIA drivers with secure boot, but wouldn’t boot up post install. Pop!_OS was pretty much the same except it did not support secure boot.
Fedora Linux showed the most promise, but it was after weeks of struggling that the Arch Linux wiki helped me wrangle a display from the graphical login manager. Rocky Linux and RHEL were a smoother experience save the suffocating dearth of basic software.
I have maintained since my first experience with Red Hat Linux in 1999, that Linux (distributions), and by extension Android, is a hack job. The fragmentation in Linux led me to FreeBSD (for servers) twenty years ago. For a hot backup OS I have a perfected Windows 11 Pro image on the original SSD, that accesses the same external NAS data as the Linux install.
My biggest argument in switching to a Mac 15 years ago was that I would rather be hardware-constrained by Apple than software-constrained by Microsoft. A lot has changed with Macs, starting with the T2 chip post-2015, to on-device scanning of images in 2021. Plus forced obsolescence of software, and with Apple Silicon, missing macOS features on Intel hardware. I am now both hardware and software constrained by Apple.
The last straw was when, as per my previous post on this subject —
I would be dependent on Apple to release parts to me at their discretion and have to needlessly suffer downtime
Apple in its high-handedness, refused to replace my Watch battery since they require that the watch battery be down to 79% of its charging capacity to authorize a battery replacement.
The cost of Apple hardware apart, macOS holds not much appeal.
Ownership I would literally rather run Windows 11 on a Mac than macOS on a PC, considering how much slack Microsoft has recently allowed in activating Windows, thereby ensuring a user’s data isn’t held ransom if one is offline. In contrast, many essential third-party macOS apps have adopted subscription and online authentication to login to local apps, preventing or limiting their offline use.
Usability macOS Messages and Mail show no contact names without native CardDAV support, but at least with Windows it can be hacked in to perform relatively flawlessly. Mail app activity never ceases when one or more non-Exchange Microsoft accounts are added, and it’s been that way since Mac OS X Snow Leopard. Since then, Windows OS has evolved more into what Mac OS X Tiger and Leopard used to be; “it just works”.
Reliability The infamous BSOD (Blue Screen of Death) or STOP error seems rarer on Windows, than a kernel panic on macOS since Catalina, and the odds of the latter seem to go up with additional processor cores. Sleep mode that Windows 98 never woke from is a thing of the past, whereas its the Mac Pro with macOS Big Sur that doesn’t automatically sleep when ‘Power Nap’ is disabled.
Performance Mac Pro hardware feels underpowered or not as optimized, from how slow Finder is at file operations over the network (NFS and especially SMB) compared to Windows Explorer. Add to that, both 3 x 3 MIMO 802.11ac on the Intel Mac Pro and 2 x 2 MIMO 802.11ax on the Apple M1 Pro MacBook Pro far underperform my Dell PC “Killer WiFi” 2 x 2 MIMO 802.11ax. Apple Remote Desktop or Screen Sharing too refreshes slower and has poorer graphics quality over 2.5 Gbps wired Ethernet versus Microsoft Remote Desktop over 5 GHz WiFi 6, each accessed over 5 GHz WiFi 6 using their respective clients.
Recovery I no longer find my previous issue of having to reinstall and reconfigure the operating system, updates and applications from scratch a deal breaker in choosing Windows OS. All considered, disk imaging is the least painful and bulletproof [backup and] restore strategy for any modern OS.
I’ve always been into optimizing so self improvement came naturally. I’ve listened to practically every opinion and doctrine, and you know that when you’ve heard more or less the same things in rotation over and over from self help gurus.
A friend once told me that I already had all the answers I needed. That was a wonderful revelation. We do indeed tend to discount our own counsel.
So after years and years of searching for more and having nobody come up with anything noteworthy I knew it was time to stop listening to everyone because they have nothing left to contribute.
My take away is:
Stop being a lifelong learner. Decide how much knowledge is enough. Then start integrating what you’ve learnt.
Listen to yourself, logically. Not self-indulgently. What you really want. You knew when you were 10 – they say go for what you wanted at that age. Likely because people reprioritize, losing sight of and forgetting what really makes them happy, instead pursuing their corrupt ideas thereof.
Have a sense of causality. It usually follows recognizing that one has agency, the privilege of choice, and the exercise of those choices causes outcomes for ourselves and others, both positive and negative.
It began with being made to realize that I was bestowing the kind of love, care, attention and benevolence I’ve always craved, on people I love, as an attempt in satisfying my own need for affection. That’s what I learnt growing up, to go out of your way to help people who have not had your advantages in life. “Be generous with your time and energy”, they said.
I might be famished by the time I get to the tenth person and still be wondering why I keep getting hungrier. Which then begs the question as to how can I ever hope to have a full stomach if every time I am hungry, I feed a loved one? The answer is likely rooted in my belief that, “love begets love”; but that led me to become emotionally depleted.
I received this feedback when I shared my thoughts, and that finally got me unstuck —
You are just desperate for company, love and for your loneliness to go away so you give a lot of what you need because that’s your perspective, and you give it because you think that’s what everyone needs too But you don’t get it back Because the truth is that’s not what everyone needs Or wants
Wow, time to reevaluate my beliefs and the saying, “Do unto others…”. What am I doing unto myself? Everything in excess is poison, even giving of myself to the point that my emotional investment breaks my bank when I feel it has not earned me so much as positive inter-personal relationships, let alone appreciation or kindness. The emotional starvation albeit coupled with the satiation of fulfilment from having been kind is not sustainable. In that regard, I decided to do —
only that which makes me feel good about myself Reducing investing in people, especially those that don’t bring value to my life, and housekeeping the mean-spirited that bring me down.
in only as much measure as I can emotionally afford Not over-stretching myself in time, effort and money as these are all means of getting emotionally invested. It’s easier investing from my emotional petty cash followed up with deleting the transaction details, such as the “send and forget” strategy I use for e-mail (viz. deleting the message from my sent mail so I forget having sent it before it gets committed to long-term memory) . I’m not expecting one to be beholden to me in any event, but it eliminates the anticipation of common decency which I might never get, and can thus move on with my life.
unto myself as I would do unto others Which is, to protect, nurture and pay heed to the needs of my inner child like a loving, caring, affectionate and doting parent.
Which then begs the question, is that the right thing to do? My go to is this blog post from which I have derived that right and wrong are societal constructs whose definitions are constantly changing, so I am not afraid or embarrassed to follow my internal compass. When I brought this up, I was asked with good reason, “But isn’t embarrassment a reflection of social constructs, rather than good or bad?” Fortunately I’m privileged enough to be a free spirit.
So armed with recent beliefs that —
doing what pleases me seems to be the only “right” thing to do, if my other beliefs are true that
the purpose of life is to be happy, considering
life is random and
the only consequences in life are those that we wittingly or unwittingly bring upon ourselves through our exercise of our power of choice,
I have decided to not be collateral damage in another person’s story.
You may be justified in feeling hard done by, especially if you have done things for others that don’t seem appreciated, but don’t waste time brooding about it. You are captain of your ship of fate, so it’s your responsibility if you’ve been sailing off course.
Extraordinary leeway is awarded by society to teachers when it comes to tolerance of their being authoritative while being wrong, without considering the impact to student morale and the diminished quality of education thus meted out and its greater impact on society.
I have come across educators who have been exceptional people, which I believe is what made them good teachers or principals, as students imbibe more from a teacher’s actions than their words. When actions don’t corroborate words, then comes disillusionment.
One of my first memories: I once found a wad of money while picking litter from the school grounds, which I dutifully handed to the supervising teacher, specifically stating that someone might have lost it. The teacher shamelessly pocketed the money right before my eyes! The incident has stayed with me for several decades as I write this. I had the morals to not keep the money, but a teacher who is supposed to be one teaching them had none.
The most consistent issue I have encountered with educators is ego. I have experienced, seen or heard of everything from a student being reprimanded, to being hit or caned, because a student bruised a teacher’s ego. The other teachers, support staff, vice principal and principal all have each other’s backs in their self-contained ecosystem, whereby they lose all respect, as students are very perceptive. Whereas outside the school, power is divested between the police, judge, jury and prison warden. A judge would not be automatically inclined to issue a warrant just because a police officer believes someone committed an offence and as such are held to a much higher standard of conduct.
Often teachers become loud, obnoxious and obstinate in the face of reason, in an attempt to assert their authority. The only thing it affirms is their frail ego, insecurity and poor character. Personal baggage is likely another form of low sense of self worth and corresponding efforts to feel good about oneself, that results in the unfair treatment of students.
A pseudo-feminist teacher reprimanded a male student for so much as defending himself from a larger, tougher and older female bully, stating that a boy can hit a boy, a girl can hit a girl, a girl can hit a boy [and they would look away], but never can a boy hit a girl no matter how extenuating the circumstances. Does that not just go to create misogynists?
Another teacher viewed an innocent drawing of a girl, reproduced from an anime character, as being, “degrading to women” and asked the student to change it; whereas when shown to another, older teacher, as a [true] feminist she had absolutely no issue with it. As a consequence of telling on the teacher, the teacher prohibited the student from ever handing in reproduced art for her class. This once again demonstrates that the student always pays for the teacher’s insecurities. A female teacher who carries her sentiments with respect to patriarchy to school and punishes students to feel superior, is what is really degrading to women.
Picking on a student is extremely abusive. If a student disobeys, a teacher makes his life miserable. A student used a laptop to accomplish a task instead of paper. The teacher retaliated with revoking his privilege to eat or drink anything (except water) or listen to music, or talk in class. Yes, the student should be following instructions, but the teacher should not be punishing him with power play either.
Teachers seem to forget that it is us taxpayers that put food on their table, and they not only fail to do their job of giving our children a quality education that includes imparting good human values, but are also abusive and hurtful towards and disillusion them. Being rude to students seems to be the norm, like they are cattle to be herded, not young people with feelings that get hurt. Like a student said in jest, “You [the teacher] are like the dominatrix that is paid to dominate us at school”.
It’s said that “power corrupts”, but actually it’s more true that power attracts the corruptible. The sane are usually attracted by other things than power.
David Brin
Why then are we surprised when world leaders act authoritarian with total disregard of democratic process; considering they are products of the education system and as such are merely modelled after their educators?
If I say, don’t think of a flower, definitely not a rose, what are you going to think of? First a flower, maybe even a rose, then definitely a rose. So what do you think will happen when you are told that you need to be thoughtless and that is meditation? Your mind will run rampant as you try to not think of anything, and you will be frustrated. So how to meditate?
With meditation being cited as the universal cure-all and solution to every problem in every religious and spiritual discourse, without ever being told how to go about doing it, dissemination of unhelpful one-liners like it being ‘a state of no-mind’ or ‘being thoughtless’, and worse still spiritual elitists saying it is not something one does but rather something that happens, it can be confusing and frustrating to the point where one just gives up.
Thought substitution is more doable, as in exchanging negative thoughts for a relatively pleasant one. Just like we distract ourselves by watching a movie. I find thinking of something I like and which scenario I can play in my head works very well for me to go off to sleep. In day-to-day work, it is easier to be mindful; single-mindedly consciously thinking of only the performance of the task at hand and not what I am going to do next or another such stray thought, but that is definitely easier said than done.
The second technique is ignoring. The thought comes, you know it is detrimental, so for example, I would say, “Okay, hello thought, thank you, but I need to move on”. That way I am kind to myself, not reprimanding myself for the thought and not dwelling on it either.
Meditation is the third technique. Now I say technique because the practice of instructions to train oneself to be in a meditative state is commonly referred to as meditation. Hence the debate about what meditation is. The purists say, “meditation cannot be done, it happens”, and mock those trying to practice a discipline. That is not helpful; it is demoralizing. Recognizing that meditation is a commonly used term for a practice and not for the meditative state itself helps bridge the gap – just as ‘medicine’, while a discipline, is a word commonly used in place of ‘medication’.
Meditation is not the exclusive domain of people who consider themselves spiritually accomplished either, just as breathing is not. It is not difficult; just different from the other two techniques. It is observing. So, say you close your eyes and these random thoughts begin. Observe the thoughts like a third party witnessing the goings on. Being thoughtless, in a meditative state, should follow as a consequence of merely being that observer.
One cannot really try and meditate. One can reach a meditative state by observing one’s thoughts. Such a meditative state is a temporary respite. In that sense too it is a practice – towards constantly being in a meditative state, being an observer, whereupon the practice is no longer needed.
If you are lost in thoughts, then that is agitation.
If thoughts are lost in you, then that is meditation.
— Swami Tejomayananda
The mantra about ending a marriage based on, “It’s better for children to not grow up with their parents in an unhappy marriage” is typical feminist pork for putting one’s happiness before that of one’s children, to divorce women from the responsibility that comes with being a parent. Despite anti-male activism and exalting pro-divorce, anti-children values, these feminists call for mother-headed households!
Marriage and children are a commitment — it can be joyful, challenging, stressful or even downright miserable; but that is life itself. When there are marital troubles such feminist-minded women seize the opportunity to manipulate the man to believe that it is his fault, then capitalize on his guilt to broker a deal on marital assets to become financially independent and exit the marriage to lead her dream life built upon the graves of the well-being of her children and ex-husband.
If there is fondness and trust in a relationship, care and respect follow. It is like breathing, one does not even have to think about it, let alone make an effort.
If, for example, a man commits an indiscretion, the fondness, trust, care and respect can be interrupted. While a woman in an oppressive relationship has the right to squelch the excesses of a man, when a woman takes her rights too far and stoops to herself committing excesses by taking drastic measures, one thinks such rights be damned, that divest a woman of her sacred emotions like forgiveness, compassion, sacrifice and devotion.
We have broken homes when the glue of forgiveness, compassion, sacrifice and devotion that binds people with fondness, trust, care and respect is diminished due to one, usually due to haste or vengeance, being focused on one’s rights as opposed to one’s duties.
Education has given us a scenario of knowledge without good sense, rights without duties, spending without earning and utilitarian relationships without love and care.
All suffering is caused by ignorance. People inflict pain on others in the selfish pursuit of their own happiness or satisfaction.
— His Holiness The Dalai Lama XIV
Happy Children’s Day, with my, as always, sincere wishes that with every parent focusing on their duties instead of their rights, every child has the amazing parents that they deserve.
