Can we get a bit more info? Does it run locally? What specs does it need? Which technology does it use, something open-ended like Whisper? Or something faster with a prefefined set of sentences like VOSK? Which TTS engine does it use? Does it do other languages than just English?
Do these private computers run a properly licensed version of Windows? What’s the cost for a license? Same as in other countries?
And another thing I wodered: Is there more Linux expertise available than in other countries? I guess the average person from India isn’t in IT. But there’s lots of IT, lots of companies from my country have outsourced parts of their IT. I occasionally watch tutorial videos or university lectures on Youtube either in english with a heavy accent or for domestic use and not in english. Some of them discuss some crazy niche Linux topics or software development, which is also oftentimes deployed on Linux infrastructure. Or is it just because India is a big country and it’s just a matter of scale that I get to see some videos from over there?
Hmm, I mean there is also publication bias. You’re more likely to edit a Wiki page if you found a solution… But you’re also likely to rant and ask for questions if it’s really bad… There is a bit in the middle where it doesn’t work that well. What I find super annoying if I find my question already posted 2 years ago and there isn’t a solution posted underneath. That means someone either got it working and didn’t update their post… or they moved on and it’s impossible. But you’re right, this really mostly happens to obscure and niche problems. Not if it’s a ThinkPad or Dell laptop midel that has already sold millions of times. But somewhat likely if it’s a newer high-end gaming mainboard or niche server that isn’t common amongst the Linux-folks.
I read the other good advice with the firmware (UEFI) update. If there’s still Windows on it, maybe run Lenovo Vantage and let it update the firmware.
I’d say it probably works out of the box.
I usually have a look at thinkwiki and the arch wiki. Since they don’t have dedicated guides for this model, it usually means it’s not supported at all and no one even tried, or it’s a smooth ride and there just are no issues. Since it’s not a niche product, I’d say it’s the latter. And it’s an older model without extravagant hardware… it should work fine.
I’m not sure. Afaik the research is happening. And AI related stuff always happens faster than I can imagine. Ultimately I want the LLMs to hallucinate. They should be able to combine ideas and come up with new and creative answers and be more than just autocomplete. I think what we need is the LLM knowing what it knows and what is made up, and a setscrew. I can see this happening with a higher level of intelligence and/or a clever architecture. I’m not an expert on machine learning myself, however that is what I took from news, companies struggling with their chatbots and everyone wanting their AI assistant to provide factual information. And I don’t see anything ruling that out completely. I mean we humans also sometimes get things wrong or mis-adjust our level of creativity. But I think the concept of facts can be taught to LLMs to some degree, they already seem to grasp it. And concepts have been proposed and things like AI agents that come up with ideas and other agents that check for factuality are in active use. Along with the big tech companies making their AIs cite the sources. In my eyes, progess is being made.
But this is why I currently don’t use LLMs for important and unsupervised stuff, and i try to avoid them when I need correctness. However… I really like to tinker with them, do AI assisted storywriting, or have them come up with 5 creative ideas for a birthday party for my wife. That works well, and with a bit of trickery you can make them output more than the most obvious ideas. And I’m impressed by their ability to code, but as I said it’s still far away from being useful to me. I currently don’t fear for my job. And I additionally struggle with the size of models I can do inference with and their respective intelligence… We’re in the Linux community here, so I think I can be open… I don’t like big tech companies doing my compute and providing me with closed and proprietary services. I don’t use ChatGPT, only open-weight models I can run myself. They aren’t as smart, but I don’t want the future of humankind to be shaped by services and good will of big tech companies.
I think so, too. I mean the traditional history search and command option suggestions are instant and come at no additional cost. I don’t know how fast ChatGPT is, I only ever play around with local LLMs. And roughly exploring what Github Copilot is about, just made my laptop fans spin on max and started to drain the battery really fast. Would be the same for an ‘AI’ terminal. And when asking the LLMs for shell commands I got mixed results. It can do easy stuff. So I guess for someone who wonders how to find the IP address… It’ll do the trick. But all the things I tried asking some chatbots that would have been really useful to me, failed. It hallucinated parameters or did something else. And I needed to google it anyways or open the man page.
I’m not sure, I currently don’t see me using such tools. I like talking to chatbots and have them draft stuff and provide me with ideas. But I also like computers in the other way, that they are machines that just follow my orders and don’t talk back. And when working in the terminal or coding, it seems to distract me if suggestions pop up and I need to read them and decide what to do, or occasionally laugh… For me it seems to work better if I think about something, have an idea in my head and type it down without discussing it with the machine… I mean not 100% of the time, sometimes a suggestion helps… But I think I rather have the chatbot in a separate window and only loosely tied into my workflow if at all. And I don’t like proprietary and cloud-based products for something like this.
There are lots of fish shell extensions, zsh stuff and loads of things that make suggestions, autocomplete, remember your shell history and remember frequently executed commands and visited directories. All of that works WAY better than the AI suff. (And sometimes also has nice pop-up menus.)
So compared to plain bash without autocomplete and Ctrl+R it may be useful. It is probably a step back for everyone else. Especially if they roughly know what they’re doing.
But I didn’t try this specific software. Maybe I would if it were free software and connected to a local LLM.
I mean it’s somewhat of a meme. But XY-Problems are super common. I also sometimes learned something new and that my approach wasn’t the best and I’m kinda experienced with Linux. It’s usually more the annoying and stupid people who don’t want to explain what they’re trying to achieve even if asked and insist on going with the path they’ve chosen without listening to advice… On the other hand it’s a balance. There are also nerds without social skills who don’t explain things well. But in my experience it’s frequently XY-Problems and the people asking for advice not listening.
Uh, my knowledge is a bit lacking. But I’ve been asked that question before. I don’t think there are that many devices with less than 3GB around anymore. And they’re probably 32bit, too. And have all kind of other issues, like modern webpages being way more demanding than in 2003. I’d skip all the details, people know what feels old and needs special treatment. If someone has an Athlon K7 with 512MB of RAM, they either need to get it recycled or a dedicated tutorial for that. Everything above should be handled by a good (32bit) distro with LXDE, LXQT, XFCE or something like that.
I think MX Linux is a good choice. I’ve also used a plain Debian with XFCE desktop for that. Other choices include: Bohdi Linux, Zorin OS Lite, AntiX, Linux Lite, Puppy Linux, Q4OS, LUbuntu, Linux Mint Xfce, Tiny Core, LXLE, Slax, peppermintOS, crunchbang++ and Sparky Linux.
What about recommending something like MX Linux if someone has an old laptop lying around and wants to revive it, and get into Linux this way?
And the question “Win 7 was the last good version” made me laugh. I remember the old times. All the viruses on XP… but it used to crash way less that it’s predecessors. Vista which was super slow and annoying. Feels like they’re making some progress since 7. (Okay, now they’re adding more and more data collection and annoyances to it.) But if I look back to Windows 7… I’m not feeling nostalgia 😆
Ah nice. At least something. But I don’t think it’ll change anything since it’s still grub outputting that, and not a life sign from the kernel.
Usually it’s just about the NVidia drivers. I’ve never had an laptop where those tools detected or installed anything else. I mean all the drivers are supposed to come with the Linux kernel per default, and you don’t need to worry.
Sounds like an opportunity has opened up to you. And I don’t know if you have anything to lose here. I’d take it and go on an adventure.
I mean, don’t do it if you got important stuff to finish. Or if you cannot adapt to a new workflow. But -for example- Fedora is super easy to install. And in the long run Linux will save you time and headache and it’s tough and somewhat easy to maintain. And you can always delete it and switch back to Windows if you like.
NVidia isn’t the best, but lots of people use it and it works somewhat alright.
Hehe, no worries. I think the community needs to stick together. I used to do (voluntary) computer support once a week at university before I moved, now I occasionally do it here. It’s always nice being able to help people …Or in your case at least trying… To me, it’s way more fun than discussing politics or the latest news, anyways. And I mean I’m no exception. I also sometimes need support, ask questions about a new distro or get my itches scratched by people who solve my issues on Github.
Sorry I have no idea. It’s been ages since I last bought a mainboard and that one was recommended in a computer magazine… I’d google it. See if other people have issues with it. And I’t trust blogs, Reddit and forums more than the traditional compatibility charts.
I guess I‘ll start thinking about replacing the mobo
Yeah, I’m slowly getting to the same conclusion. You could try and rip out all other non-essential components to rule them out. If there are any. And go through the BIOS options once more, switch everything to “Other OS” and try the “legacy” modes for ACPI, boot etc. But at this point I somehow doubt any of this will make any difference. Just make sure the next mobo is alright 😆
I have another kernel option for you to try: “earlyprintk is useful when the kernel crashes before the normal console is initialized. It is not enabled by default because it has some cosmetic problems.”
I’m not sure if it gets you anywhere, but it could make the fist kernel messages show up.
And you could try replacing the acpi=off with acpi=noirq. If it’s something with the interrputs, there are extra options like apic=irqfixup or nolapic (mind the difference apic <-> acpi). (Taken from this document)
I had the time to google a bit and I was right, I am about to run out of ideas. There is a good general guide in the arch wiki on how to approach issues:
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/General_troubleshooting#Boot_problems
Maybe also read that, but that’s pretty much it.
services.tabby.enable = true; services.tabby.acceleration = "cuda";? Could be another way.