Adaptive

I like the approach drive takes, but if you are looking for full automatic sync, there is also InSync https://www.insynchq.com/ (linux client available; I've installed it from the AUR for example).

As has been noted, this is for timesyncd, usage of which is entirely optional. Additionally, as boneheaded as it is to use ntp servers from a single corporate entity when ntp.org exists, you can address this by setting your own ntp servers in the timesyncd conf file.

http://www.freedesktop.org/software/systemd/man/timesyncd.co...

FWIW, I really like timesyncd being there out of the box with systemd. It is exactly what I want, and nothing more, about 99% of the time when dealing with ntp synchronization.

EDIT:

Let me add that if you want to specify ntp.org servers right now you can add or edit the following stanza to your /etc/systemd/timesyncd.conf file:

    [Time]
    NTP=0.pool.ntp.org 1.pool.ntp.org 2.pool.ntp.org 3.pool.ntp.org

I'm in way too late on this thread for this comment to be noticed, but this is so absolutely self-serving for Apple. DO NOT LAUD APPLE FOR THIS.

If Apple were doing this for any reasonable purpose, they'd do it on Safari on the desktop as well. Almost every sane reason for blocking ads is as pertinent there.

They are simply trying to force content providers to go native app and become part of the Apple revenue stream. That's it, pure and simple.

I was thinking of making the PKGBUILD a github repo though also hoping that we won't need a custom build much longer :)

I jumped immediately to Arch, so can't speak to the situation with Ubuntu, sorry. I did walk through the initial out of the box boot/config of Ubuntu but was not impressed with the Dell tweaks and setup process, so dumped it. I'm definitely happier on a 4.0 kernel.

I too wish that they had a 16 GB edition. It was the only spec that made me pause and say "Huh what"?. I was running 8bg prior to this but generally I want to max out that ram and they should offer it as a spec option.

If your definition of "Linux on the desktop" is "I see it everywhere I go" then your metric is well behind the early adopter curve.

If, however, your metric is to look at influencers and early adopters, it's clearly happening.

I think back to 04 when I switched to a Mac (from Windows). The idea that Macs were "happening" was inconceivable to many. Forget finding mainstream software. Forget drivers for hw support. Forget file exchange. Forget networking with anyone doing real work at your company. It was all uphill and hard. That was just 2004.

Back then it was generally either hold outs from the dark, pre OS X days or early adopters switching over (or back) to a Mac. If you had your eye on the market, I think in hindsight it's clear that there was a groundswell of interest in the platform (from passionate early adopter switchers, etc). But at the time, nothing was obvious and early adopter advocacy to just "buy a mac" fell on usually deaf ears.

We're in a not dissimilar situation today with Linux. The early adopter segment is different and much more dev oriented, but that's not a bad thing. Add to this that there are some fundamental and very important technology shifts happening that I think are going to make a positive impact on the desktop linux experience over the next several years (wayland, systemd, container/virtualization improvements, packaging and distribution rethinks).

It's happening because people like me are using Linux on the desktop every day for real work, and for many of us it's eminently preferable to any other OS out there. It's happening because we, the early adopters, are not "on the fence" about Linux: I no longer think "Linux is nice but OS X just works". It's happening because a shift to the web has made app lock in on a specific platform less of an issue. It's happening because vendors like Dell are throwing actual resources at the market. Small though it may be, this market is made up of influencers that are the thin edge of the adoption wedge.

On my 2015 XPS 13 I my power will idle (with wifi/bt on and 50% screen brightness) down to under 5W. You can be more agressive with power savings (I run TLP, but in a pretty middle of the road configuration) and get better use out of it. 10 hours is reasonable use for general work, less if you're compiling while watching netflix of course :)

As of 4.0, yes. 4.1 may be a different story, but as of rc2 I didn't think it was worth it and rolled back to 4.0.x. Another user has written a great arch wiki page on the general issues here: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Dell_XPS_13_(2015) , but I have no problems right now running on my patched kernel (linked to above, though I'm actually building a new package right now).

I didn't get the touchscreen version intentionally. That's not to say that it's better with/without touchscreen. I just didn't want it, and wanted a lower resolution FHD screen for power savings. I know that gnome has basic support for touchscreens and just switched away from using a Surface Pro 3 with Gnome. It was just ok. I'd say you'll be fine since you've got a keyboard and trackpad as solid backup for the touchscreen.

There is no hardware difference to the windows/linux machines... the hardware on the dev units isn't any less or more powerful. You will, however, want to make sure your BIOS is upgraded to the current rev (A04 as of this posting). http://www.dell.com/support/home/us/en/19/Drivers/DriversDet...

I'm writing this on the first Dell I've owned since... 1999: a new "Developer Edition" XPS-13 2015 (FHD i5 variant for max power savings, which are pretty incredible).

This is close the best linux laptop I've used, including various my various thinkpads and macbooks.

A couple years ago I met an enthusiastic Barton George showing off the first gen XPS 13 at the ubuntu dev conference. It was sexy but flawed. I wasn't interested in the machine, but I thought Barton was a guy to watch. His project Sputnik group is the only reason I have kept Dell on my radar at all.

They could be doing a lot in a better way: the customer outreach, ordering process, out of box experience: all include some (at times very) rough edges.

Linux on the desktop is happening and, as I've said for a long time, it's happening where it needs to: with developers first. I'm not super excited with their Ubuntu centric strategy, but it's minimal effort to get Arch up and running on the Dell dev units. If anyone is going this route I'm maintaining a kernel for the XPS 13 (2015) here: https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/linux-xps13-alt/

I'm running Linux on a Dell XPS 13 (dev edition, FHD screen + i5 for power savings). Plenty of power for most of my laptop use, big "infinity" screen (thin bezel) making the machine small but screen big, and overall positive experience.

It's also driving a 34" screen right now, and not breaking a sweat. http://imgur.com/WvGwGo9

Yep. I just use the monospaced variant. Unless we radically rework editors and terminals, proportionally spaced type seems unworkable.

Musk's delivery style is so refreshing compared to the Steve Jobs clones on every stage. He's knowledgeable, charming, funny. Great stuff.

I've been using input in terminal/vim for a couple months and quite like it. Not sure if it's the end-all be-all font but it's pretty easy on the eyes, and very tweakable.

I bought an aeropress :)

I'm an original backer. I backed at the machine level, so would have received a unit.

My full take away from the situation was simply that they had bad business sense and burned through cash on a several bad decisions, then hoped to pull success from the jaws (or more realistically, the stomach) of defeat, so made ridiculously upbeat postings in an attempt to hand wave over the cracks in the project.

It was a risk; I took it on. Not my most expensive bad investment by far. I checked out of monitoring the Kickstarter feed once it became clear that it was going no where. That was well before the final gasps from the ZPM people.

I'm glad that Kickstarter has pushed projects to post risks, avoid renders, etc. None of that would have mitigated the bad-businesspeople issue, however.

-

Edit: To make things clear, I really don't hold a grudge on this. I threw money at some clever ideas, but we all know making them happen at scale can be hard. They didn't handle things well but I felt that the hugely negative response was largely an overreaction.

Arch on desktop and personal server.

However, I recommend that you get Ubuntu up and running on your hardware first. Hardware support out of the box should be good enough to identify that things are mostly working (or not). Then put Arch on it. Arch is a great distro to learn on. Set aside a weekend. You'll learn a LOT and can always roll back to Ubuntu (or Fedora, though that has it's own out-of-box limitations) if you don't enjoy the Arch process.

I dabble in Fedora from time to time, and deploy a LOT of Ubuntu boxes, but I stick with Arch personally due to familiarity and the AUR.

Edit: I also stick with Arch because, no matter what distro you use, if you search for the solution to an issue you are having, you are likely to find the Arch Wiki is one of the top results. The wiki is a generally outstanding resource.

The most accurate answer in the thread, though too brief and thus will be easily dismissed. In the interest of fleshing out this answer in such a way as to make it useful:

For those interested in why this is the most accurate answer, go read "Willpower" by Baumeister.

http://www.amazon.com/Willpower-Rediscovering-Greatest-Human...

I am always surprised, though shouldn't be I suppose, that the first answer for so many people is some completely externalized solution (e.g. blockers, network disconnection, etc.).

There are tools that can help you to create habits, but you must be aware of the role that self-regulation plays in ongoing maintenance of these habits, otherwise the moment the tools or support infrastructures you've put in place are gone, your habits will revert.

Don't make your self control reliant on app updates.

I note this above but want to emphasize the fact that lastpass-cli supports the lastpass two factor options. For anyone looking for a tool like this for use both in browser and in scripts, it's great to have two factor natively supported in both places.

This. The ability to use lastpass and pull passwords out for use in scripts, offlineimap, is really lovely.

The lastpass cli utility also supports their two factor options. So you get scriptability, ubiquity, and two factor. Killer.

That's a clever battery hack. I'll be using it on my sp3. Nice.

The 15 hours of battery was only for the FHD (1920x1080) display. I scanned The Verge review but wasn't clear if they tested battery life on the FHD or QHD+ display.

Toss up some terminus and vim and the FHD model sounds like a great all day coding machine.

Also predicted in the movie 'The Fly' where Goldblum's character fails the voice recognition during his transformation.

All future technology has, apparently, been predicted by 1980/90s sci fi.

By default zsh will expand globs if you hit tab on the command line.

However if you have more than a handful of matches it's going to be a suboptimal method of eyeballing the glob results.

I prefer to use `print -l` as it will break the glob results on separate lines.

An additional benefit of ZSH is that it will normally return each glob result as an independent item (this avoids the problem bash has with just returning strings that in turn are broken on IFS characters). Using that flag with print will give you a clear sense of the actual results.

One of the reasons I like zsh is its copious expansion flags. If you aren't wedded to POSIX or bash syntax, consider zsh for this reason alone.

In the case of the first example he shows, the cat -n problem, you can do the following in zsh to expand the results of the wildcard globbing automatically:

    cat *(:A)

This will give cat full paths. Not significantly different from the PWD referenced with ./* in his example, but more universal in applicability, particularly when you start to use things like the file type filters:

    cat *(.:A)

giving you only files, not directories, and also expanding to absolute paths, while

    cat **/*(.:A)

does the same for plain files in the working directory and all subdirectories as well.

Remember to test your patterns with a print statement first:

    print -l **/*(.:A)

before passing them to a command.

Considering the byline on this wired article, I'd be cautious about ascribing any accuracy to it. This is pre-scandal lehrer. I have no idea how much review Wired has done of his previous work for them, but it's very much a reader-beware situation.

Same here. TV on, I get video, TV off and it's audio only.

My parents have mentioned the story of how, at an EAA convention, they asked a couple guys with mics and field recorders what they were doing, and they said they were recording audio for a movie called Star Wars. I'm betting that's the biplane.

(I will now imagine that I can faintly hear the ambient sounds of breathless, curious hippies in the background of that millennium falcon shot)

That is very cool... I remember walking into an Iridium store back in the day trying to think of way to justify a purchase of one of the phones to tinker with (I couldn't come up with a rationale). Can't think of a pressing need for a RockBLOCK either, but it's a neat device.

Nice to see that the iridium fiasco has resulted in some long tail utility

edit: here's a page with a proof of concept with an arduino hookup: http://makezine.com/projects/make-37/iridiumsatellite/