I personally love it, and would hate to go back to a tiny screen like a 40inch TV or whatever people have these days. Especially if you’re more than 2m away on your bed/couch. There are drawbacks, depending on how you use your TV they might be massive or completely irrelevant. For example having it on in the background is less practical. It doesn’t inclue (useful) speakers, but I have a pretty decent stereo system setup there anyway. A great positive is that you usually want a screen (not just a blank wall), which just goes away when the projector is off (rolls up, usually motorized) and you don’t have a large black frame just standing around somewhere. In my case it comes down in front of the bedroom wardrobe. The projector itself is basically a box mounted to the ceiling on the other side of the room from that, so also out of the way.

The projector is connected to a PC as a primary source in my case (many use AndroidTV sticks or FireTV boxes), which plays whatever I wanna watch (streaming, local videos, youtube/twitch, …), but I would never watch actual TV as in broadcast television. If you do, you still need some form or receiver that turns the TV signal (internet, cable, satellite, …) into HDMI. Many more modern projectors also have some of that network stuff just built in similar to a smart TV, but generally don’t have true receiver for cable/satellite.

Finally, there’s light management. Typically you don’t want real sunlight coming in through a window while actively watching something (movie), but it’s fine for background or casual/party watching (sports or maybe youtube). How much ambient light you can tolerate while watching depends highly on your preferences and how you watch “stuff”. For a real movie night we do usually lower the blinds for just a more immersive experience. But it’s incredibly subjective how much darkness is needed. Projectors these days all have sufficient light output to produce a picture even with significant ambient light, but the contrast and just quality of course improves significantly with a darker environment.

I agree that that’s a perfectly fine reason for container base images, but has nothing to do with my normal desktop system. Or 99% of peoples normal desktop systems. The question there is only “does my stuff work”, and at least for me the answer is “yes”. That’s the context of this thread (at least how I understood it).

Maybe that really is the real source of the instability claims. I mean I’m not setting up my KVM virtualization server on a CachyOS-install, but honestly even if I did I’m not sure I’d actually run into issues. Or just use Arch directly for that, which quite a few people also do. I have no idea how often those have issues, I assume they wouldn’t stick with Arch if they did, but I truly have no idea about the practicality of that.

The reason I’m asking is that literally every source you look at for comparison of linux distros will tell you “unstable” for CachyOS and/or Arch. It has been the literal opposite experience for me: I have significantly fewer issues getting stuff to work (which is also a form of stability) compared to Debian on my servers. I wouldn’t say I’m angry about being misled, but I’m certainly still confused where the claims can come from…

I also have a laptop that runs CachyOS, and I use that very infrequently. So whenever I do, it’s a sizable update (still runs through faster than a normal windows update though). That system also never had any issues, and also “just works”. Like you say, you also never had any (real?) issues. Just having a “feeling something might break” doesn’t actually means it’s unstable either, just that you’re scared it might be, while it actually isn’t. It’s obviously fine if that then isn’t a distro you want to use, but don’t call it unstable if it has been perfectly stable for you? Do you know why you have that feeling, and could it maybe just be that it’s people always just saying “it’s unstable”, perpetuating that “feeling”? I can also imagine that it was much less stable in the past, or there may be phases that are less stable, but I just got lucky and the last year happened to be rather stable in comparison.

I personally don’t have an issue with the reading of PKGBUILDs when I’m using the AUR, as I have like 2 packages from there or something, which also update comparatively infrequently. Everything else is base repo (CachyOS or Arch) and if there are Arch news you should obviously read those, but that happenes so rarely it’s really not an issue either (for me), and usually it’s there for a good reason like the recent AUR vulnerabilities. As for normal changelogs, I assume for packages in the main repos, I don’t even know where to find them. Never needed to read them either.

I can’t understand where this “unstable” image comes from. Just because it’s a rolling distro? I’ve been on CachyOS for over a year now. I update on most days I’m using the system (which is also most days). I had basically no issues. I have significantly less issues with it than I have with Debian on my servers!

Did you have a negative experience with CachyOS or arch in general? Or are you just repeating what you heard?

Haven’t had a TV in like 2 decades. Do have a projector though. Screen size used to be like 4m diagonal, now due to space constraints down to a little under 3m. Always in the bedroom: comfortable and the only room with enough space, honestly.

That’s also a rather massive price difference what seems to be similar devices?

That screen is absolutely tiny.

Some can be controlled through a local API, but often you still need a gateway to facilitate access (it can reach out to the cloud, but it can be disabled and used local only).

Some that were in very good standing (Hoymiles) recently had security flaws where the manufacturer refuses to acknowledge or fix them, leading to essentially anyone to control them at any time with a few dollars worth of equipment (source in German). They basically broadcast their own encryption key.

Unfortunately the nature of getting a distributed system makes them much more vulnerable to issues like that as some form of communication is needed for everyday operation. This is much simpler with a central system.

Event horizon is also what had a massive impact on me back then. Obviously he’s great in Jurassic Park, but for me it’s not the first thing I think of with him.

RIP indeed…

Yea not even remotely close. The correlation would be “it’s in space”, which is pretty good, but doesn’t make it “like” it either.

Works great as a static image. Would probably be better if it actually played…

Many solutions exist, rdp clients aren’t exactly rare. I’m personally using xfreerdp for the extensive options: I can connect to a Windows system (at work) and have it be full screen on 2 of my 3 local monitors. It’s fast, reliable and just works honestly.

But what you seem to be looking for is something more like RustDesk or vnc. You want to look at and help with an existing session. If you connect with remote desktop, the local monitor gets locked, so you can only take over, but not show or help. VNC over the open Internet is generally not a great idea for security, but wire guard exists, as does TailScale and/or NetBird which means you don’t need to expose it. So that also works.

mid game

So about 50ish hours in.

There was some sort of scandal a few years back that some smart TVs (Samsung?) were using not just open networks (let’s be honest, there usually aren’t any), but other smart TVs if the same manufacturer to be able to send their telemetry. I don’t know what game of that, or if that was ever made illegal (probably not).

This is impossible to answer definitively, as we have no idea how long the memory shortage will last (1-2 years? 5+ years? Forever?). Plus not having a price makes it very hard as well. 16gb also isn’t a lot for gaming.

The system is still fine, especially for 1080p. The CPU has integrated graphics, but not really capable by today’s standards. Can probably run simple games fine though (slay the spire, balatro, stardew valley, …).

Given a good price, it’s a fine system.

The legality of it and not being thrown in jail probably helps with broader appeal.

There is a Bluetooth chip somewhere that is connected somehow. Assuming you can somehow get to it without destroying the battery, disconnecting it shouldn’t be difficult.

It’s heavily CPU bound in a normal system today. Extracting (let alone compressing) a 2 GB file will take a noticeable amount of time. Reading the whole thing from an nvme will take roughly 1 second. Random access is no longer a relevant performance impact either.

It is my understanding that multithreaded extraction is hard(er) cause the used dictionary is built up incrementally. So to extract later parts you need to have extracted earlier parts.

It’s no longer good if the money made from said company are used this way. It was good until last week or so.

Spoiler: there won’t be relief in 2028 (unless the bubble actually pops).