Yeah, trying kernel versions incrementally is probably the only way I could end up on newer software but in that case I’d probably still be limited to enterprise LTS software so we’ll see what I end up doing.

That was an interesting writeup thanks!

In my case I’m kinda setting my own compliance requirements. I’d think that a thin client having enterprise vendor LTS support for core libraries and CVEs will be plenty safe until I have 4 grand to spend on new client hardware. (Independent contractor with data center dedicated servers that actually run up to date distros for the actual work)

My other option is to use windows 11 since that fully supports the hardware I have but I really don’t know if that’s truly safer than a stable OS with another 6 years of official support lined up. I just didn’t expect compatibility issues with a bog standard 9 year old chipset, nvme ssd and 16gb of ram.

Hardware incompatibilities are a bit hard to live with when it means burning your retinas and the whole point of this specific hardware being the sunlight readable display and the ability to survive the inevitable contact with water on a boat.

Considering how many servers still run Ubuntu 18.04 in production I wouldn’t dismiss the idea of someone putting effort into finding vulnerabilities but those would be unlikely to target desktops anyway.

That’s specifically what I’m trying to not do tho. I did permanently add it to the grub scrip on the distros I tried but losing hardware acceleration and display brightness control on a super bright screen wasn’t ideal.

I was tempted to say it was a hardware issue until I tried 18.04 and it worked flawlessly. I guess having it be a certified version does mean something.

I do require CVE patches on this machine so using the old kernel past EOL/ESM isn’t really an option. I might have to see if it’s possible to extract only the required drivers.

The undying enterprise system lol I think you can even get them till 2033 or something wild like that.

The issue in that case does become whatever third party software you have that needs a newer OS to get patches.

Around here they won’t even do locates on fiber. They’ll just wait till the gas company digs through it and splice it back after instead of spending the time marking things.

Seems the backhoe is the most efficient way to locate fiber after all!

Yep. Intel i5-8350U from 2017 in this case.

Seems like a fairly common issue that I can’t find a solution to. Intel iGPUs around that generation just not playing nice with the newer drivers so you have to add “nomodeset” in grub to bypass them. But then you’re stuck not being able to adjust display brightness (horrible when you have a sunlight readable display glowing with the power of a thousand suns) or run anything that requires a gpu. (Tried accessing my foundryVTT instance and got 1fps and web videos would barely decode at all) everything else pretty much worked fine if you ignored all the boot errors lol (without nomodeset in grub the OS crashes within minutes if not seconds)

I’m sure there’s a way to make it work but that’s a future me problem. I just needed a rugged thin client since I can’t rely on local hardware on a sailboat anyway.

That’s exactly what I’ll have to figure out! Either that or find room in my budget for a newer rugged laptop.

Still getting security patches till May 2028 with the ESM program. https://ubuntu.com/security/esm

I’ve worked in municipal IT my whole career and even during the latest big conference I attended the AI presentations were fairly tame and cautious.

Municipalities move SLOWW and most still don’t have a fully fledged out AI policy so no-one is forcing you to use LLMs. I do keep having to tell people that the ai answer they copy pasted to me is completely wrong so that’s fun lol.

Is is also nice to know that at the end of the day you’re helping someone maintain a city more efficiently for the people living there instead of enriching some corpo overlords.

Pay is ~15% less than industry average but the benefits tend to be good with great job security and hours.

Not sure about that part. Got my info from here and it didn’t mention anything about the 100 year lease. Maybe that’s on the trust itself?

https://torontoisland.org/purchasers-list/

Montréal fixed slow ferries a while back. You’re definitely beating traffic on one of these and they essentially aren’t bothering anyone zooming across an already turbulent river commercial Harbour.

$900-1000 per month if you’re on a boat. Probably less during the summer. The houses on the islands are artificially cheap since the prices and sale is controled by the city. The issue is the limited wait list to have the chance to buy one of the houses.

So 50,000 – $700,000 for houses plus a $60,000-78,000 one time lease payment.

At the high end that would maybe get you a two bedroom condo across the water but the average is probably comparable to the price of a one bedroom condo.

I think the main advantage would have been getting non urgent freight off motorways as bulk efficiency is the big perk you get with boats.

If you want to boat into work every day Toronto has that option available all year from the islands. Another perk is living in a car free & wooded neighborhood 5-15 minutes away from downtown/harbourfront. Lots of people also live on boats on the Toronto islands, drive their dinghy into town during the summer and then dock at one of the harbourfront marinas in the winter. (Just watch out for the crazy water taxi drivers!)

Nouuuu now I want to know the poly pun!

This using object storage duplicated on two separate services.