Yes, thank you, it was a while ago!

I have a couple of these drives gathering dust on the top shelf of my play room. They fitted a standard floppy drive slot but connected to the PATA socket on the motherboard. I just looked on the label of one of them which has a manufacturing date of march 1999.

These were a great idea. They were compatible with standard 1.44MB floppy discs so didn't take up an extra slot in the PC case but could also use the special discs which could store 120MB.

Unfortunately, after using them for a short while, I started to find errors when reading back to check and verify backup archive files. The drives themselves didn't fail when I was using them but the media proved to be pretty much as unreliable as the late manufactured cheap and very nasty standard floppy discs.

Soon afterwards, reliable USB flash drives were becoming cheaper in ever increasing capacities so I donated an unopened, factory shrink wrapped box of LS120 discs to the local Museum of Computing. So that was the end of the super floppy.

As skogs says, same reason I ended up using Linux Mint for a good few years.

Trouble is, last time I installed it there seemed to be things that just didn't work properly or at all any more. I needed to give something else a try, so wiped my new Framework 13 and instead installed Debian. Wow, what a difference, everything works. I've also upgraded the hardware in my home server and installed Debian on that too which is also working faultlessly.

The thing that I really wish for more than anything else in Linux, is for some talented people, instead of faffing around working on second derivatives of something that already works, to pick up great projects that have for some reason been abandoned by their original developers, get them working properly again and back into the repositories. My first wish in this is for ufraw to be back in the repositories. It used to do exactly what such a tool should do - open a raw file from my camera, let me manipulate the brightness, contrast, curves etc. and save the result as a png file. Nothing else is needed. Software that people depend on should not just be abandoned. If I had any sort of a clue as to how to go about fixing it I would try to do so. Unfortunately I don't have that depth of knowledge so I carefully keep backed up an ancient Linux Mint VM that contains a working ufraw so that I can continue to use my K7 DSLR. Not ideal but it's the best that I've got for now.

After using it for years I had problems with Linux Mint - I remember not being able to use gscan2pdf.

I've left the old desktop PC with Mint installed, too much trouble to start afresh after spending a fair amount of time setting it up. Running Debian Trixie on my Framework 13 and an old Toshiba Satellite which work perfectly including gscan2pdf. I'm also gradually learning to get Debian set up as a better mail server than I currently run. rspamd is next on the learning curve.

So, there you are, I recommend Debian.

I just bought a Fairphone 6. Totally repairable. So is my Framework 13 laptop. Batteries and everything else easy to replace.

For example I ordered a USB-C interface for my laptop to replace a USB-A socket now that I have the Fairphone with USB-C. Cheap to buy and took about 30 seconds to swap over. Didn't even need to shut the laptop down.

It's a 32" Samsung, about 17 years old. The screen is still absolutely perfect, it's got digital TV aerial in, 3xHDMI, 2xSCART, video and VGA in. Audio outputs are RCA analogue and optical. And no goddamn Ethernet, WiFi or stupid smart "features". i.e. it does exactly what a TV should do and nothing else.

TVs are currently far, far too cheap. So cheap that it's cheaper to chuck one away and go buy another when it stops working. Because they can in my limited experience be easy to repair, my opinion is that there really ought to be at least a 100% purchase tax on them to make repair cheaper than replacement. Every town used to have a TV repair workshop, providing employment and preventing waste.

My TV simply needed to have the electrolytic capacitors in the power supply replaced. This fault is perfectly obvious when the back is removed. No test equipment required, just a simple visual check that reveals a blown part with a bulging top. A complete set high quality replacement parts only cost me about £10. Easy to fit with a decent soldering station and a solder sucker tool.

The monitor I'm using right now had the same fault, as did another that I bought for my son at about the same time as the TV.

Don't chuck it, take pride in having a little skill and fix it.

I just used it to log in to Slashdot from my passcode manager. I've no idea what any of my passcodes are. Double or triple click in the passcode manager followed by middle click does the job.

The middle click isn't in the least bit confusing, I love it, I sometimes use it maybe 30 times in a day.

Please whoever is listening, don't disable it.

My 17 years old Samsung 36" dumb but great TV, works with all the digital channels, has optical digital audio out, HDMI, antenna, SCART in, stopped working a couple of weeks ago.

Of course I know that not everyone has the skills to repair printed circuits but it was just GBP6.14 for a replacement set of electrolytic capacitors for the power supply and now it's working like new again.

Can the rest of the folks here satisfy my curiosity please? I've also repaired two monitors with the same fault, so, is blown electrolytic capacitors the most usual failure mode in TVs and monitors?

Same here, I have just one security camera to watch over a rare vehicle that I've had unsavoury individuals taking too much of an interest in. I think it also discourages cold callers.

I bought a Reolink POE camera through eBay, fitted it in May 2021. It looks to me to be really well made and is still working perfectly. I paid more money for the POE switch to power it than the camera itself. I use "motion" on my Linux server to monitor the camera and record movement. Only problem experienced, I initially had the night time IR lights on the camera switched on but the problem with this is when a spider puts silk threads across the front of it. Dew drops on the threads keep triggering recording all night long as the breeze makes them tremble. The camera still works at night with the light from a nearby street light but switches to noisy monochrome.

Generally very pleased with my Reolink.

Just have Donald get his marker pen out and enlist a range of "defence industry" personnel from technicians to company executives, to make sure qualified personnel are available to the armed services for the repair of front line equipment. When they find their backsides are plonked onto bench seats in the hold of a C-17 or A400M headed for Donetsk, attitudes will rapidly reverse.

TVs used to be pretty good.

My own Samsung TV was purchased in November 2008. It has inputs for antenna, 2 x SCART, 3 x HDMI, AV, VGA... it has both RCA analogue and digital optical audio outputs, the latter is connected to my new Marantz amplifier. I have Mordaunt-Short speakers and the sound quality is excellent.

The channel selection list is either all digital channels or a user selected subset. The channel selection is generally very responsive and easy to use compared to my GF's almost new Toshiba "smart" TV. I can scroll forward and pre-select programmes more than 24 hours in advance. If I wish to stream TV that also works beautifully using my Chromecast and Framework laptop running Debian Trixie.

In short, it does exactly what a customer needs it to do and nothing else.

Why the hell can't they just build TVs that do what the customer wants for the price they need to ask for profitability without pushing a load of shit into them?

I stopped using gnome years ago when the new version went out with Ubuntu. I was using a little Toshiba netbook and it was a disaster, just wouldn't work. then found Mint/Mate which worked perfectly on that same little computer for the next maybe 13 years. It was a while ago but if I recall correctly I went over to Mint because it was the only distro with Mate. It was a quite a while back so my memory might be incorrect on this point.

Replaced the Toshiba this year with a Framework 13 running latest Mint/Mate and that was not quite a disaster but it just didn't work properly. Two programs in particular just didn't work at all and the laptop locked up several times.

Now I'm running Debian 13/Mate on it. As I've told Framework support, this, as far as I can tell, is absolutely perfect. Everything "Just Works" and there's been no lockups at all. There used to be an irritation with battery message popups but since the BIOS update this has been fixed. Yet there's no mention at all of Debian on the Framework recommended distributions. Using Ventoy it was the easiest and most explanatory install yet.

Unless of course you have a BT router which takes 12V into a stupidly different barrel connector with a thicker centre pin than anything else. I have a "BT Home Hub 5 Type A" which has been hardware hacked to take a STANDARD 12V barrel plug and firmware hacked with OpenWRT installed so now it actually works properly.

Of course the Xaiomi router which also takes 12V but has a stupidly tiny little barrel connector socket needs an adaptor from eBay to take the same standard power plug as the Linksys router and the modified BT router.

All so that I can use a properly decent quality 12V power supply with an IEC mains inlet for which I paid decent money to Farnell, RS or whoever it was.

This is an unbelievable PITA. Let's have all of these devices powered by USB-C then we won't have to worry at all about finding the correct barrel plug or what voltage the router/switch/laptop/phone wants.

My Framework laptop power supply/charger is a neat little cuboid that has a USB-C outlet socket and a "Mickey Mouse" type standard mains inlet socket. It so far works with ANY device that I've tried that needs charge via a USB-C cable.

Anyone who wants one, as far as I know you can just order one from Framework without buying a laptop although those are also excellent.

Similar history here.

After various distro hops I'd been using mint/mate for years. Installed the latest on my new Framework 13 and it was a disaster. Amongst other problems it kept locking up occasionally needing me to do CTRL-ALT-DEL and going away while it shut down so I could reboot it. I wiped it and installed Debian 13/Mate which has been working absolutely perfectly since it was released.