I moved from the city I grew up in and gave away my car on the way out. That was in 2017, and I haven’t owned a car since. I drive extremely rarely — used to rent a car for a few hours every couple of months to run this or that errand in the Pacific Northwest US. I’ve since moved to a larger city with better transit on the US east coast. I live in the center city and can’t imagine any reason I would need to drive at this point. It’s been a few years since I’ve driven a car.

How practical it is will depend heavily on your lifestyle and where you live. If you’re in most parts of the US, the default assumption is that you will drive a car, and you will be excluded from many things if you don’t. If you already live in a place that is conducive, are willing to move to a place that is, or can otherwise structure your life in such a way that doesn’t require it, you can absolutely do it. There are certainly trade-offs, but you couldn’t pay me enough money to go back to a car-centric life.

These are the dongles that came with the keyboards, so they’re paired out-of-the-box (although I have also used the process for re-pairing them). They are just connected to a USB port on the computer, so not really permanent, but I do leave them connected. Not both at the same time, but each in turn. Hope that answers your question, but I’m not 100% sure I understood it.

Since posting this, I’ve also tried installing powertop and checking the tunables. According to lsof -t, the dongle is connected directly to the root hub (under only xHCI host controller). I noticed in powertop that those controllers were still under power management, so I disabled them. That didn’t seem to help. The keyboard still lost connection.

Thanks for taking a look. Nothing in dmesg. I’m using the keyboard wired at the moment. That top entry happened when I disconnected USB. I flipped to 2.4GHz and tested the OS key which worked. Tested it periodically until it didn’t work but there were no additional log entries. The rest of the log entries happened when I reconnected USB.

[Mon May 26 11:07:31 2025] usb 1-12: USB disconnect, device number 8
[Mon May 26 11:14:00 2025] usb 1-12: new full-speed USB device number 10 using xhci_hcd
[Mon May 26 11:14:00 2025] usb 1-12: New USB device found, idVendor=fffe, idProduct=0082, bcdDevice= 1.07
[Mon May 26 11:14:00 2025] usb 1-12: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=0
[Mon May 26 11:14:00 2025] usb 1-12: Product: M67
[Mon May 26 11:14:00 2025] usb 1-12: Manufacturer:  
[Mon May 26 11:14:00 2025] input:   M67 as /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:14.0/usb1/1-12/1-12:1.0/0003:FFFE:0082.0017/input/input46
[Mon May 26 11:14:00 2025] hid-generic 0003:FFFE:0082.0017: input,hidraw0: USB HID v1.11 Keyboard [  M67] on usb-0000:00:14.0-12/input0
[Mon May 26 11:14:00 2025] hid-generic 0003:FFFE:0082.0018: hiddev96,hidraw1: USB HID v1.11 Device [  M67] on usb-0000:00:14.0-12/input1
[Mon May 26 11:14:00 2025] input:   M67 Mouse as /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:14.0/usb1/1-12/1-12:1.2/0003:FFFE:0082.0019/input/input47
[Mon May 26 11:14:00 2025] input:   M67 System Control as /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:14.0/usb1/1-12/1-12:1.2/0003:FFFE:0082.0019/input/input48
[Mon May 26 11:14:00 2025] input:   M67 Consumer Control as /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:14.0/usb1/1-12/1-12:1.2/0003:FFFE:0082.0019/input/input49
[Mon May 26 11:14:00 2025] input:   M67 Keyboard as /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:14.0/usb1/1-12/1-12:1.2/0003:FFFE:0082.0019/input/input50
[Mon May 26 11:14:00 2025] hid-generic 0003:FFFE:0082.0019: input,hidraw2: USB HID v1.11 Mouse [  M67] on usb-0000:00:14.0-12/input2
[Mon May 26 11:14:02 2025] input: input-remapper   M67 Keyboard forwarded as /devices/virtual/input/input51

Are there other logs that would be good to check?

Just remember any backup is better than nothing.

This is comforting.

There are several reasons to backup data only and not the full system. First you may be unable to find a computer exactly/enough like the one that broke, and so the old system backup won’t even run. Second, even if you can find an identical enough system, do you want to, or maybe it is time to upgrade anyway - there are pros and cons of arm (raspberry pi) vs x86 servers (there are other obscure options you might want but those are the main ones), and you may want to switch anyway since you have. Third, odds are some of the services need to be upgraded and so you may as well use this forced computer time to apply the upgrade. Last, you may change how many servers you have, should you split services to different computers, or maybe consolidate the services on the system that died to some other server you already have.

Some good things to consider here. Whether or not I’ll want to upgrade will depend on how far this theoretical failure is. If storage fails, I might just replace that and restore the backup. If it’s something more significant than that and we’re 2-3 years down the line, I’ll probably look at an upgrade. If it’s less than that, I might just replace with the same to keep things simple.

I guess one other upside of the full system backup is that I could restore just the data out of it if I decide to upgrade when some hardware fails, but I don’t have the reverse flexibility (to do a full system restore) if I opt for a data-only backup.

If you don’t have the budget for on-premises backup, you almost certainly can’t afford to restore the cloud backup if anything goes wrong.

I believe egress is free on Backblaze B2.

Just make sure to test the restore procedure once in a while.

Good call on this. Curious if you have a procedure for actually doing this. I could just wipe out my system and rebuild it from the backup, but then I’m in trouble if it fails. What does a proper test of a backup actually look like?

Check out Borgbase, it’s very cheap and it’s an actual backup solution, so it offers some features you won’t get from Google drive or whatever you were considering using e.g. deduplication, recover data at different points in time and have the data be encrypted so there’s no way for them to access it.

I looked at Borgbase, but I think it will be a bit more pricey than Restic + Backblaze B2. Looks like Borgbase is $80/year for 1TB, which would be $72/year on B2 and less if I don’t use all of 1TB.

The vast majority of your system is the same as it would be if you install fresh, so you’re wasting backup space in storing data you can easily recover in other ways.

I get this, but it would be faster to restore, right? And the storage I’m going to use to store these files is relatively little compared to the overall volume of data I’m backing up. For example, I’m backing up 100GB of personal photos and home movies. Backing up the system, even though strictly not necessary, will be something like 5% of this, I think, and I’d lean toward paying another few cents every month for a faster restore.

Thanks for your thoughts on the database backups. It’s a helpful perspective!

Much simpler than my solution. I’ll look into this. Thank you!

Is your script something you can share? I’d love to see your approach. I can definitely live with a few minutes of down time in the early morning.

Had considered a device with some storage at a family member’s house, but then I’d have to maintain that, fix it if it goes down, replace it if it breaks, etc. I think I’d prefer a small monthly fee for now, even if it may work out more expensive in the long run.

Good call on the cost calculation. I’ll take another look at those factors…

If that’s the main downside to a full-system backup, I might go ahead and try it. I’ll check out Backrest too. Looks great!

Much easier than what I was trying to do. Thank you!

OK, cool. That’s helpful. Thank you!

I know in general you can just grab a docker volume and then point at it with a new container later, but I was under the impression that backing up a database in particular in this way could leave you with a database in a bad state after restoring. Fingers crossed that was just bad info. 😅

You’re right, but part of the draw of Linux is that you have more control over your OS. An immutable distro makes that a lot harder to get at as compared to non-immutable.

Yep! Like I said, freedom is more than one thing. The way this questions is framed tries to put the blinders on and obscure that fact, creating a false equivalency between the freedom to sideload software and some abstract notion of “absolute freedom” which doesn’t actually exist. We’re rarely choosing between absolute freedom and zero freedom, certainly not in this case.

Freedom is not one thing. The choice between iOS and Android is not a choice between zero freedom and unlimited freedom. You’re simply choosing which freedoms you want to prioritize.

I’m planning to switch to an Android device running an alternative OS with my next purchase after using iPhone exclusively since the 3g. That’s driven by a change in priorities: I want the freedom that comes from using a phone that isn’t a surveillance and advertising vehicle. For years now though, I’ve been enjoying the freedom of knowing my phone will continue to receive updates for a minimum of 5 years after I buy it new while some of my Android friends will be lucky if they get two.

I feel it’s important to note for new people that, while an immutable OS is great at keeping you from breaking your system, the way it achieves this can make some things you would want to do more difficult. In Bazzite, installing software, for example, works differently than under a typical distribution.

I’ll give the example of two pieces of software that I use regularly: 1Password and Espanso. It took a fair bit of digging to figure out how to install 1Password in a way that would preserve its tight system integration… and it still doesn’t quite work — copying a password in particular contexts just doesn’t put that password on the clipboard, while it works fine in other contexts. Espanso on the other hand just won’t work under Bazzite best I can tell. I haven’t found a way to install it at all so I’m just doing without. Oh My ZSH was also quite tricky, and I got yelled at in the Bazzite Discord for doing it the wrong way. 😅

Plenty of the software I use works fine and was easy to install: FreeTube, Kdenlive, VLC, Zen Browser… unless you count the fact that the 1Password browser integration just won’t work with Zen Browser, presumably because I haven’t found the exact right combination of Flatpak permissions plus settings that will allow it to.

All this to say, I love Bazzite for gaming and use it every day, but the moment you step outside that world and want your computer to do something a little bit differently, it’s a major headache. In the context of gaming, it’s much closer to “just works” than any other distro I’ve tried.

Ending slavery doesn’t reset everything back to zero. Imagine if you’re running a race against someone else. The person officiating the race (no clue what this kind of person is called 😅) lets your opponent start running the race and keeps you back at the start line. Then, they have a moment of clarity and say to themselves, “Wait a second… This isn’t fair!” So, they stop that person where they are, apologize to you, say they promise never to do it again, and blow the whistle so that you can both start the race.

But wait! That person still ended up starting way ahead! But we already ended head starts before the race started so it’s OK, right? Well, no, because the person who got the head start still got to start from their advantaged position.

But this isn’t quite the same because your issue crosses generations. So, a better analogy might be a relay race. Maybe the head start is stopped just as the second person on the opposing team receives the… thing you pass in a relay race. (Why am I making an analogy to a thing I know nothing about? 😅) They didn’t personally get the head start. So, it’s OK to go ahead and start the race now with one relay team already on their second runner while the other is on their first, right? It wouldn’t be fair to punish that person who didn’t directly gain the advantage of the head start.

Well, no, because that team still got an advantage and the other team still started at a disadvantage. Reparations are less about punishing an individual and more about leveling a playing field.

These “categories” are only superficially the same thing. Here’s what social/casual games and PC/console games have in common:

• Both show (usually) moving images to a player
• Both accept input that is (usually) reflected through an impact on the game’s outcome

Here’s a couple of things that are very different:

• social/casual games monetize by letting you pay to make the game less bad or by preying on psychology. PC/console games monetize by dangling the promise of some kind of experience you couldn’t otherwise have.
• social/casual games are useful for destroying time. PC/console games are useful to stoke imagination and elicit emotions.

I know I’m being reductive here, but I think the point is valid. They’re superficially the same but used for very different purposes. Putting them side-by-side on a chart like this is like comparing revenue across all car makers and determining that, because McLaren made $280 million in 2020 while Kia made $44 billion, sports cars are going away soon.

If McLaren did go away, the McLaren driver is not going to replace the McLaren with a Kia, because those are not the same thing, even though they are in the same way that a pair of scissors and a Hattori Hanzo sword are both blads, or maybe in the same way that both brass knuckles and a bazooka are weapons even though one cannot replace the other. If Baldur’s Gate 3 were never released, I wouldn’t have dumped my $60 into Fortnite skins because I’m looking for something particular out of a game. My goal isn’t just to burn $60 on anything that shows me moving pictures and maps my inputs onto those pictures. Those attributes of a video game may be what make it a video game, but they aren’t the attributes that will make me enjoy it or want to spend money on it.

If McLaren and all sports car makers go away, most of the money spent on those is not going to funnel into compact cars. It’s going to stay in people’s pockets. $280 million dollars doesn’t hold a candle to $44 billion… but someone is going to want to take that $280 million! So, someone will probably keep making sports cars… just like someone will probably keep making the games that will take the remaining ~$73 billion slice of the video games pie.

Some public companies may jump ship to chase the social/casual dollars… but these are the companies that have been trying to blur the lines anyway (think EA), so we’re really not losing much. The talent who delivered PC/console games we used to enjoy from EA have mostly moved on to other studios or to form their own studios so they can keep making what they like.

Reddit can’t be divorced from the leadership. If you hate the direction leadership is taking Reddit, how can you still like Reddit itself? What is it apart from that?

This argument makes more sense to me with Lemmy. Yes, if you hate the direction one instance admin is taking their Lemmy instance, it doesn’t make sense to hate Lemmy as a whole… but Reddit has only one “instance,” so if you hate the “admin,” you hate Reddit.