It's usually confined to mobile workstation-class ones, which have Xeon processors. The 3612QE was intended for embedded machines and is one of the few i7 variants to support ECC.
After learning that the 3612QE itself supports ECC RAM in contrast to the stock CPU options and that the QM77 chipset also does, I purchased a DDR3 SODIMM with unbuffered ECC. I have not been aware of any other attempts to test this combination.
The machine did not POST and did not produce any beep codes. Absolutely no response to any input aside from shutting down when briefly holding the power button. Everything returned to normal upon putting the original RAM back.
I suspect the BIOS lacks support, but whether this changes with coreboot remains unknown to me, at least until I learn how to prepare and flash coreboot.
This is purely an exercise in curiosity.
This stuff makes me grateful that my bank and your bank still maintain a fully-featured website. I would be quite upset if I were stuck with such an app and no website.
Would like to, but never figured out how to get the TPM 1.2 chip in my X230 to work with cryptsetup. Everything seems to be written for TPM 2.0 only.
same here but with hentai on searx.be
XFCE4. It's intuitive and predictable without sacrificing the ability to customize it exactly the way I want (with Chicago95 ofc). The built-in panel widgets are nothing short of amazing: battery, CPU, RAM, network, and disk monitors with labels toggled off to save space and a clock with only what I need on one line: MM/DD HH:mm:ss
Enough features so that it "just works" (no nitpicking through config files), especially on laptops, without being bloated in any way. Bonus of its lightweight nature is that I can keep my Debian/XFCE setup consistent across all of my machines, both old and new.
Can't wait for the finished xfwm4 port to wayland so I don't have to sacrifice some security running X11 and so I can do fractional scaling on hidpi machines.
QR code reader and generator on both phone and laptop
- Phone: SecScanQR
- Laptop: ZBarCam and Zint
But I'm glad to have learned about LocalSend here so I'm no longer limited to short text snippets
I miss print coupons. Hearing "get the app" or "there's an app for it" makes me flinch these days.
Ideally, 256 GB + microSD. 128 GB today gives me ample room for my offline maps, music collection, podcasts, and Kiwix libraries. No gaming, only the occasional video, and one photo per day on average, so 256 GB would future-proof it.
As for a minimum, 32GB. For several years, I had a phone with 4GB of internal storage. Didn't use the microSD slot since it seemed to drain the battery. Android takes up much more space nowadays, but I wouldn't be too upset having ~16 GB usable space for myself.
The SD card would be separately encrypted as a portable backup of everything important to me, accessible on-the-spot whenever I need it.
I'm curious, how did you build the BMS with a cheap controller? I won't judge. I've always wanted to build my own battery pack that reports percentage back to the machine, without worrying about killing the BMS if it loses power.
School is where the passion for learning goes to die and the desire to cheat is born
In this day and age, hobbies are the last bastions of passion and curiosity. One who is engaged in a hobby is intrinsically motivated to learn and apply what has been learned in novel ways, just as the scholars of old have done. School, reviled by many a student, has earned its reputation by perverting the concept of learning and exploiting students' passions. The desire to cheat is most unnatural among students, a telltale sign that one's passion and curiosity for the topic at hand has been extinguished, replaced with a desire to rid oneself of a burden, the burden of learning only for the sake of becoming learned.
Security concerns: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyper-threading#Security
Makes me wonder how far the closest alternative, glim, could be upgraded to match Ventoy given the confines of GRUB.
Someone had mentioned that Fedora fails to verify when booting from Ventoy. Now I'm thinking if I could dd the media loaded via Ventoy and compare with an original copy to see what changed.
In an effort to keep my X230 snappy for a few more years until I find/make a newer laptop to my liking, I finally caved in and bought an i7-3612QE board. Posting some observations and thoughts based on the questions I had prior to buying. Previous CPU was the i5-3320M.
Setup
- Debian 12
- XFCE
- 16GB DDR3L
- Two SSDs
- Hyper-threading disabled
- 1vyrain BIOS with classic keyboard EC patch
Performance
- Not literally twice as fast, but the improvement is quite noticeable
- CPU no longer seems to struggle while loading Javascript-laden websites
- Rarely hits 100% CPU usage, even on Youtube (sadly bloated enough to be a sort of benchmark)
- Single-core tasks are only slightly better than before
Thermals
- High 40s at idle to mid 60s when busy
- Feels cooler compared to previous CPU, which I assume is due to the CPU usage being lower across all tasks.
- Did not upgrade to the AVC cooler. Toshiba cooler works well and is quiet as ever.
Battery
- About 4.5 hours of office tasks and light browsing from full to empty with an aftermarket 55 Wh 6-cell at 98% health
- Wattage in the mid 9's at idle with brightness at a comfortable level for a well-lit room. Increase from low 8's with the i5-3320M.
- When doing actual work, wattage hovers from 11 to 15 watts
- 16 to 18 watts watching Youtube videos
- SLT1 IPS display does consume ~1 W more than TN. I installed tlp but left it on default settings.
- 65W Lenovo charger only works when in sleep mode or shut down. In normal use, however, it will not draw the full 65 W. A 90 W charger or a 65 W GaN charger that the X230 believes is 90 W will both work (my 65 W GaN charger worked well and did not overheat, YMMV)
Other
- Make sure to enlarge the cutout on the black sticker on the underside of the cooler since the 3612QE die is larger
- EC flashing will require a 90 W charger or a 65 W GaN that the X230 believes is 90 W.
- Factory CPUs have BGA package underfill. I have not checked for myself, but it is likely that the upgraded CPU does not have underfill. This should not affect day-to-day use, but the lack of underfill will make the BGA solder joints more susceptible to fall and vibrational damage. Liquid may get trapped underneath in the event of a spill.
Value
- With shipping and taxes, the upgrade costs about 200 USD and takes 2 hours. The total cost-to-date on my X230 built from parts is around 500 USD.
- Do not think of this upgrade in terms of how much performance you get for the price. Think of it like upgrading and daily-driving a classic car. If it brings you joy to daily drive an X230 as it does for me, then it may be worth it.
I like my Linux installs heavily customized and security hardened, to the extent that copying over /home won't cut it, but not so much that it breaks when updating Debian. Whenever someone mentions reinstalling Linux, I am instinctively nervous thinking about the work it would take for me to get from a vanilla install to my current configuration.
It started a couple of years ago, when dreading the work of configuring Debian to my taste on a new laptop, I decided to instead just shrink my existing install to match the new laptop's drive and dd it over. I later made a VM from my install, stripped out personal files and obvious junk, and condensed it to a 30 GB raw disk image, which I then deployed on the rest of my machines.
That was still a bit too janky, so once my configuration and installed packages stabilized, I bit the bullet, spun up a new VM, and painstakingly replicated my configuration from a fresh copy of Debian. I finished with a 24 GB raw disk image, which I can now deploy as a "fresh" yet pre-configured install, whether to prepare new machines, make new VMs, fix broken installs, or just because I want to.
All that needs to be done after dd'ing the image to a new disk is:
- Some machines: boot grubx64.efi/shimx64.efi from Ventoy and "bless" the new install with
grub-installandupdate-grub - Reencrypt LUKS root partition with new password
- Configure user and GRUB passwords
- Set hostname
- Install updates and drivers as needed
- Configure for high DPI if needed
I'm interested to hear if any of you have a similar workflow or any feedback on mine.
They sell finished motherboards with the upgrade on eBay and Aliexpress. Nothing newer than Ivy Bridge though.
Anyone here use an X230 with the quad-core mod? I'm looking into it and was wondering about the reliability and battery life compared to the stock i5-3320M.
Been using searx.be for a bit now and they had many results in Dutch and German, which can be expected for a site based in Belgium. But does anyone notice an influx of results in Russian? Did they change the server location or are users in Russia catching on to it? Yandex isn't toggled on in the settings either.
Not trying to judge security by language. I just kinda liked having results in a mix of languages I could read.
What did it in were the semi-annual mandatory feature updates, which restored the invasive settings and bloat I worked hard to remove. Already being acquainted with Linux at that point, I began dual-booting and later having Windows on an entirely separate machine for a few stubborn programs I needed for work.
What made me acquainted with Linux was looking for alternatives after the loss of theming options and the start menu in Windows 8. That eventually brought me to my present Debian setup with the Chicago 95 theme, which recreates (and even improved) the workflow and stability I had grown to love in Windows 2000.
The first time I ever booted into a Linux iso, however, was to migrate files off of my machine, which was excruciatingly slow to transfer files under XP.
TIL what happens when the thermometer maxes out
Banking apps seem to be a motif among things that don't play well with privacy ROMs. My bank's website does everything I could want out of it. I think I might be ignorant to something.
- What about banking apps is especially compelling?
- How often do banks put must-have features behind an app?
- And should I be concerned that banks might move away from offering services through browsers?
If you want to avoid this judgement, get an Apple silicon Macbook Air or something...
Damn, me over here trying to flex my Chicago95-ass X201T to my classmates
Storytime!
As a physics major, daily driving Linux worked out pretty smoothly. The thing that saved me from trouble the most was making a weekly full system backup (I used Clonezilla and my file server). If anything was truly incompatible, I took care of it on the school's computers.
In my second semester, I began dual-booting on my X201 Tablet and desktop, eventually booting into Windows infrequently enough that I made my X201T Linux-only by the end of my second year.
Around that point, I began using LUKS full-disk encryption on my machines and USB drives. I highly recommend if you don't already, even if just for peace of mind. I have strong ideas about the way things ought to look and work, so being able to customize Linux to my heart's content (with Chicago95 ofc) made doing work on my computer a bit more enjoyable.
Documents
- MS Office: Libreoffice worked 95% of the time. For the other 5%, I used the school computers or my Windows VM.
- Google Docs and GMail: accessed through Chromium, which I only used to access Google and sites linked to my school's SSO system.
- We did a lot of writing in Latex, though it might be a physics thing
- A lot of other small stuff I'm starting to forget, but if I don't mention it, I probably did it through the browser.
Lab
- MATLAB: GNU Octave sufficed 75% of the time, often needing just slight changes to the code. Otherwise I used the lab computers or my desktop with actual MATLAB.
- Proprietary dana analysis software: One had a .deb package for oldoldoldstable so I set up a VM just for that. Otherwise, lab computers it was.
- Lab computers running old and new versions of Windows were available to us, so if there was anything computationally intensive or requiring proprietary software, I would just take care of it in the lab.
Social
- Slack, Discord, Facebook, Instagram, Whatsapp: browser client, which I would check on a schedule
Tools
- VPN: NetworkManager, though it was a bit janky. I think it's a lot better nowadays.
- Printing: We had a web print portal to upload docs and pdfs to a printer of our choice.
Graphics
- Mostly prepared my posters, etc in a mix of Libreoffice Draw, GIMP, and Inkscape
- Adobe: Had to use it on one occasion. Used the library computers where it was installed for everyone to use.
- Digital notes: I would use Xournal on my X201 Tablet whenever I forgot to bring my notebook or refill my fountain pen. Managed to impress a few of my iPad-toting classmates when I whipped out the pen and the display around on what they believed to be an ancient clunker.
As for the desktop, I had purchased it with gaming in mind, but it eventually became my SMB file share, media server, and RDP session host so I could make any library desktop like my own. Each thing in its own VM, of course. By the end of it, I was one of about 3 students running a server over the campus LAN. Even in the comp sci department, surprisingly few students used Linux.
Linux also met all of my computing needs while studying abroad in Germany. For five whole months, I had not used Windows once. Though my SSD did give out on me once, a backup saved the day.
A friend once did need to use a rather invasive remote proctoring tool. Highly recommend a separate laptop or at least a fresh SSD for this case.
Mobile privacy, if it's relevant
- I was in the fortunate position where none of my classes or jobs required proprietary mobile apps
- Friends used Venmo or whatever else, I paid back in cash
- SMS and emails sufficed for regular communication
Overall, it was smooth sailing using Linux throughout my college years and no incompatibilities that couldn't be solved in the library or a computer lab.
edit: i used debian btw
I'm about to degoogle my stock Android phone. For the past few years, I've used it to handle the non-open source apps that I don't want running on my main phone. As I've finally weaned off GApps, I realize that I might as well go degoogle the rom as well.
edit: to be clear, I'll be using sandboxed Play services on GOS
But since that phone is my compatibility guinea pig, is it likely I'll still run into an app that demands unmodded Android with no alternatives? In your experience, has any bank or other service required the app on regular Android, with no alternative for the desktop, browser, etc?
I wanted to see if having a dedicated low power writing machine with "emergency" internet access would help with my productivity. Also a bit of nostalgia as it was one of my first laptops. Nothing too remarkable about it as long as I kept to offline office tasks. But between the short battery life and the profound slowness of google docs (have to use it for work, ugh), I went back to using my X230.
As I understand it, X11 has many inherent security concerns, including programs being able to read the contents of other windows and intercept keystrokes. Wayland addresses these concerns but at the moment breaks certain functions like screen readers, cursor warping, and the ability of a program to resize its own window.
I am curious as to how the display protocols of MacOS and Windows handle these situations differently. How does a program in those operating systems gain permission to read the contents of other windows, if at all? What is to be done in Wayland for these functions to be more seamless or are there inherent obstacles?
Bought a Pixel 4a second hand since it's the last Pixel with a headphone jack that isn't too big for me, and I'm hoping to keep it as long as I can.
Unfortunately, it's about time for me to replace the battery. I tend not to treat my battery too well (can't be bothered to keep it between 20% and 80%, but it's supposed to be consumable, right?) and I'm not sure if replacement batteries will hold up as well over the years. So I'm wondering if it's fine to just replace the battery and pop the whole thing back into my case without gluing the screen, so future repairs are a bit easier and won't involve the risk of breaking the screen while prying it off.
For reference, I'm using one of those cases with an interlocking front and back, so it ought to hold itself together and not fly apart if I drop it. (edit) I guess what I'm looking for is experience as to whether the newly introduced slack between the glass and body tends to make make the screen more fragile or put undue strain on flex cables.