The Serval WS is also more than twice the price of my Pangolin… and I had a one year warranty, so I’m not sure what you mean with lifetime support. As for the specs (i.e. the screen etc.), yeah, they are great. But the case is very poorly designed on my pang12, and gets bent out of shape, which can cause mechanical failure in the hinge, quite frequently, despite the aluminum chassis. My complaint is just that it is far from rugged, which is problematic for me, as I travel a lot with it. But your mileage may vary.

PS: one more thing that really bothers me is the known problem with the touchepad on the pang12, which regularly fails. Mine also came with a faulty motherboard, which suggest bad quality control. Over all, these issues have caused me to lose faith in System76 hardware.

I’m traveling right now, but will get back to you on my playlist generator.

I hadn’t thought of syncing music libraries! You are indeed right, MPD does not have that, and it would be a hassle to set up. One point to apple…

I have a Pangolin 12. While it has great specs and software support, the build quality is horrible, and over the course of two years now, I have had to screw it open and bend the laptop case in position more often then I’m comfortable with. It is the far, far opposite of rugged, which is the main reason I want to replace it. Twice now, it has just randomly decided to not boot for one or two weeks…

MPD works pretty well for the music thing, and, I don’t know if this is would be an option for you, but I programmed my own smart-paylist-generator in rust as a hobby project to get control of my 500Gb (around 10,000 100% legally acquired tracks cough, cough) library. The additional control over the algo meant I got something that works waaaay better than pretty much anything else I’ve tried (including Spotify suggestions, etc. — the only thing I still use is Bandcamp for new artist suggestions); if you have the time, I highly recommend a homemade solution like that. It is a lot of work though.

Anyone here have a StarLabs laptop (briefly mentioned in the article) and am opinion on it? I’m thinking about replacing my crappy System76 laptop and looking for something with good build quality.

The VLC thing can be solved relatively easily by installing opi with zypper, and then running opi codecs, which will add all the necessary repos and install everything. After that VLC (and h.264 etc) will work like a charm.

I use librewolf, with default settings, as my main browser. If a page doesn’t work (which is quite rare for me) I usually turn of uBO which does the trick. There are of course a few known culprits that don’t work, like Netflix. I have brave installed for that kind of thing 🤷.

Also Tor is definitely not more usable then Librewolf…

Could you point out any specific sites that don’t work for you?

I’m not sure I entirely follow you (I’m only half awake, sorry), but programmed music is only generated by computers insofar the computer is generating 44100 samples every second based on a set of mathematical rules the composer made. AI music is generated based on huge datasets and probability; the composer has very little to no specific control.

If I program a instrument/synth in Supercollidor or Pure Data or some hardware synth, and then sample the instrument/synth or create and sequence a melody for it on my MIDI (piano) keyboard or Schism Tracker, etc., I have complete and absolute control over everything, down to the very waveform. In that case I am truly and purely the creator of the piece.

If I type in a prompt, I am just playing a probability lottery. I have done jack shit more than describing a piece of music.

I might have misunderstood you though. For now, I’m going to bed. Good night!

I wholeheartedly agree with you for the most part, but one thing confuses me. You say

Fucking DJ sets are walking around using synths instead of analog instruments […]

Synthesizers can be both analog or digital. Neither is even remotely comparable to AI music, as there is still a very real composer. Is this a typo/misunderstanding? Thanks for clarification!

That is by no means AI generated, and certainly not by today’s understanding of the term. If I write a score and design an instrument (or sound, etc), that is still a creative process. Brian Eno literally created ambient music with algorithms like that, but it is still his creative work.

My point is just computer-generated ≠ ai-generated in general discourse.

In all fairness, those are all very well optimized, compared to today’s complete and utter bullsh*t… A 1060 is Dldefinitely not E-waste though!!

It’s only the AM5 mobos, you can still get very cheap AM4 mobos, even with PBO (performance boost overdrive, huuuuge performance boost for me at least). The new AM5 mobos are like 200 bucks WTF? Aaaand they have shit audio 😭

If it’s a pure DAC, it’s default output will likely be between 1 to 2 Volts RMS. If your listening on iems or ~30 Ohm headphones that is gonna be crazy loud. It seems like you are using digital audio control to manage this (i.e., the audio level in your DE), which is possible, but certainly not ideal. It also is kinda bad for the audio quality, as you are digitally remixing it, and if you ever switch to high impedance headphones (or already have), the output current will be sub-ideal.

If I’m assessing your situation correctly, then this is quite easy to solve though. You just need a preamp! This will give a nice knob to control audio with much more precision and finesse. I know that both JDS Labs and Schiit Audio offer headphone amps with built in preamps in the USA. I can highly recommend the JDS Labs Atom Amp 2. In Europe your a little more limited, but FiiO has some nice options I think.

Of course none of this is necessary if you don’t want audiophile levels of quality, but it would boost the audio quality (presuming your DAC doesn’t have a proper preamp), and would certainly give you a tactile, wonderful knob.

I can certainly attest that my HD600s sound quite a bit better out of a JDS Labs Atom Amp 2 than out of just my DAC or—god forbid—my Mobo audio… They sound even better out of my vintage 100W Onkyo amp, of course, but really not by much. I am really impressed by the Atom Amp. I initially just bought it for travelling, but it has now basically become my main amp lol.

Okay, ramble over.

I have yet to encounter a VST that doesn’t work at minimum with yabridge. I gotta admit though, since I switched (ca. 3 years ago now) I find myself using Linux native tools much more that the VSTs I used to depend on so much. I use airwindows (full Linux compatibility) much more on the VST front, and find myself replacing many windows VSTs with pure data or supercollider…

Some cool Linux tools I’ve discovered and are now dominating my workflow:

• Reaper (https://www.reaper.fm/), also super common in professional studios.
• airwindows (https://www.airwindows.com/), genuinely amazing and FREE!
• Pure Data L2Ork & Max (https://l2ork.music.vt.edu/main/make-your-own-l2ork/software/), literally infinite possibilities.
• Supercollidor (https://supercollider.github.io/), you can never have too much Supercollidor…
• Orca Sequencer (https://100r.co/site/orca.html), basically my default sequencer now.
• old-school tracker (my fav: https://schismtracker.org/)
• and much, much more!

Also audio management (routing, etc) is sooooo nice and faaaast with jack in Linux. Literally a dream. If anything, I think my experience has significantly improved since switching to Linux vis-a-vis audio production.

And Reaper and Bitwig!

I had a 3060 Ti.

I couldn’t game on Wayland for about 20% of my games (very frustrating), couldn’t use specific Window Managers like Sway, experience constant screen tearing on X11 (which I often had to use, because the game would crash on Wayland) when gaming, and had a significant performance hit in some games.

CS:GO ran like a dream and actually better than on Windows, but with the release of CS2 my performance on Linux was about 20% worse than on Windows. My 1% lows were also crazy on Linux (median=190fps, %1=80fps). This meant, among others things, that I just couldn’t play death match anymore — my FPS would make it unplayable. This was largely an optimization issue and I think some of the 2025 Nvidia driver updates of improved the situation a little for CS2 specifically. The screen tearing on X and the buggyness on Wayland were enough for me to switch though, even if eventual improvements might come.

I am now extremely happy with my 7900 XT, which I got for less than any available 9070 XT (in my region) and which amusingly actually has better performance in CS2 then then the 9070 XT on Linux. It’s massively overkill though, I could have just as well gotten a 7800 XT or 9070 (non-XT).

I am still very, very pleased. Hopefully this will last me a few years, unlike the gosh darn 3060 Ti.

Alright, I’m done with my huge block of text. Hopefully this was helpful.

You wouldn’t mind elaborating on “of course things are so simple”? It feels like an awfully vague answer…

But there are plenty of common expressions that use the genitive:

• Trotz des Regens gingen wir spazieren.
• Während des Essens hat er angerufen.
• Wegen des Staus kam sie zu spät.
• Außerhalb des formellen Schriftverkehrs ist der Genitiv selten.
• Ich bin mir meiner Sache sicher.
• usw.

Using the dative with “von” would just be incorrect here. I certainly use and hear the genitive regularly, at least within these expressions. But maybe I am just one of those uptight formalists 🤷 — I always thought the genitive was rather elegant.

I do admit that there are some everyday situations in which it sounds clunky though…

Literally the only social media I use (apart from signal, if that counts).

I’m pretty sure clap is completely cross platform, which is pretty cool. But the infamous VST is unfortunately not; you need to create separate Linux and Windows VSTs :(