fhein

A few years ago my wife and I built a computer out of old parts for her friend's then 10 years old son. Last month we were visiting them, and I heard the wife's friend say something funny that I thought I'd share with you.

They live on the other side of the city, this was the kid's first computer, and his mom doesn't have much computer experience either, so our goal was to build something that was easy to use and hard to break from the beginning. Originally I choose ElementaryOS since it seemed to fit the bill, but after a year or two it turned out that it couldn't be upgraded to a new major version without a full reinstall so it got stuck with an older version. We didn't visit that often, and the kid's games still worked so it wasn't a major issue until Factorio broke due to glibc incompatibility.

When his birthday was coming up last month we bought him a SSD to make the computer a little bit zippier without a major upgrade, and I thought I'd give him a brand new Linux experience too, so I asked for advice here and in the end chose Bazzite. While I was helping the kid with the installation, I overheard his mom saying in the other room:

This Linux thing.. We've never had any problems with it, he just clicks something to install it and it works. Unlike normal computers, where you always have to do things and fix them.

Perhaps not the most eloquent, but I consider it a very good review.

Couldn't find a dedicated community for distro recommendations, I hope it's ok to ask here.

A couple of years ago my wife and I built a computer and gave it to a friend's kid. We put ElementaryOS on it since that seemed pretty fool-proof, but it appears to require a re-install to upgrade major versions so it has been stuck with an old glibc and because of that he can't play Factorio.

For his 13:th birthday we bought him a SSD so it would be a good time to reinstall Linux, but is there perhaps some better choice than ElementaryOS? They live quite far away so I can't easily pop over to fix his computer if something breaks, we don't spend enough time there for me to teach him to fix things himself, and he doesn't seem very interested in learning how computers/operatings systems work either.

• Hardware: Some old Intel CPU with 8GB DDR3 and a GTX1080
• Usage: Gaming through Steam+Proton, Lutris and browsing.
• Requirements: Games work, OS never breaks on updates. Doesn't need to be "kid proof", I don't think he touches any stuff he doesn't know what it does.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/1396665

I'm about to invest in some "prosumer" level 18V power tools, e.g. Makita, Dewalt, Metabo, etc. The general consensus appears to be that they're all more or less equal and it doesn't matter much which brand one goes with, but a few years ago I developed tinnitus which has made me more sensitive to high frequency sounds. And having tested a few cordless drill drivers at various hardware stores I can definitely tell they're not equal when it comes to what the noise sounds like, even if they measure similarly in sound pressure level.

Currently I have a Ryobi 18V brushless that I measure to 83-84 dB(c) at 1m which makes it pretty loud, and it also has a quite a quite high pitched sound which makes it worse. Looking at a spectrogram from a calibrated measurement mic there's a pretty clear peak at 6kHz. The drill drivers I've been looking at all have a rated sound pressure level (Lp) around 76 dB so they should already be noticeably less loud, but I'm hoping to find one without those high frequencies if possible.

I've been able to test a few drills in person and got some initial impressions. Unfortunately the local hardware stores have a pretty limited selection of brands, they don't have all models in the store, and you usually have to bother the staff if you want to try something with batteries in it. At first I thought I could remember my subjective opinion of different drivers, but when I later got the opportunity to re-compare two of them head to head I realised I have really bad memory..

Head-to-head comparisons that I've done:

Makita DDF484 vs Dewalt DCD791: The Makita has a very high frequency whine, kind of like dentist's drill. The Dewalt is probably just as loud, but a little lower pitch making the noise slightly more tolerable, while still not great.

Makita DDF484 vs 485 vs 486: When it comes to high pitched noise, 484 was worst, followed by 485, and the 486 was most tolerable.

Dewalt DCD791 vs DC800: The 800 had a more high pitched noise than the 791, once again reminding me of the dentist's drill.

Not compared with anything, so only subjective impression:

Hikoki (a.k.a. Metabo HPT in USA) DV18DD and Dewalt DCD777: Smaller and weaker tools but much more quiet than everything else. If I were going to buy 2 drill drivers I'd probably get something like these plus one larger for heavier work.

Metabo (the made in Germany, non-HPT, brand) DS 18 LT BL: Only had a quick try with this machine but without having anything to compare it with I thought it sounded pretty reasonably tolerable. There's a version with quick change chucks, unfortunately only the smaller (L) and larger (LTX) models have offset and angle chucks for some reason but that's a feature I would really like to have.

Anyone compared Milwaukee to other brands with respect to noise? The only store I found that sells them said they didn't have any charged batteries so I couldn't try any.

Not exactly sure what I'm expecting from this post, since the question is so subjective.. Perhaps someone with experience of multiple cordless drill drivers could share their opinion? Or someone else with a similar aversion to high pitched noises could say if they found any tool that they're happy with?

I've been toying with the idea of replacing all my old, mostly corded, power tools with a single 18V system and like many others I'm trying to decide between Makita and Dewalt. They seem to be pretty even and most recommendations boil down to "pick the colour you like best".

However I bought a subscription to a magazine that does a lot of product testing, and saw that they gave all Makita drills the lowest rating in the "expected battery life time" category because they only lasted 300 charging cycles out of the 400 they do as part of the test. Now 300 cycles is quite a lot for a home DIY:er, but is battery life something that Makita owners have had issues with? I can't remember seeing anyone complaining about it when looking for user reviews and comments. However I do have a vague memory of some pros complaining about Makita "smart" tools shutting down supposedly because they detect that something might break, thus forcing the owner to hand it in for service.

Article in Swedish, and probably paywalled.

edit: Since I doing a bit of testing how annoying (i.e. mostly how high pitched) different drill drivers sound, which hopefully could be useful to someone else, I've updated the title to include this.