Still figuring things out here. In the world, I mean.

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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: July 7th, 2023

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  • This may be a controversial inclusion, and it’s based on my relatively unsophisticated understanding of Linux. I believe the reason casual computer users hate Linux (generalizing here) is that “Linux” is not one thing.

    Commercial operating systems are monoliths. Windows 11 is Windows 11. macOS is macOS. Apart from a few surface-level settings, all instances of them are the same. If you know how to use that operating system, you can go to almost any computer running that OS and start using it, just like you use the one you have at home.

    “Linux” is entirely modular. There’s no single thing called “Linux.” You can pick and choose each component to build up your own customized OS from the ground up, and distros take advantage of this. I know just within my household, I have three Linux systems, and casual usage varies wildly across the three. One is a SteamDeck, which is a different kind of thing, but if I just take the two computers as an example, on one, you have an application menu in the top left where the other has an application menu in the bottom left. Also, those menus look completely different. That alone is enough to frustrate a casual user. Now take the fact that they each have different settings panels, different bundled apps, etc. and you have a recipe for making users always feel lost when moving from one system to another.

    I don’t think this means you need to teach how to use every available desktop environment, window manager, or sound settings panel, but I do think it would be useful to introduce this concept as part of your curriculum. The sad part is that I think a lot of your audience will tune out at this point because they never had to know that on the commercials OSes, but I think it’s important to be forthcoming about it rather than having your audience blindsided by it.






  • 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?