I mouse with a trackball (left handed).
It there a way to reduce the sticktion of the ball without reducing the friction between the ball and my thumb tip?

The problem is that for very fine movements the ball doesn't move smoothly, it moves in little tiny judders making accurate placement of the cursor difficult.
With cleaning and ball polishing it moves a lot better, but I then find that my thumb slides on the ball surface without moving the ball!

I can't seem to find a happy medium where my thumb can grip the ball, but the ball can move smoothly.

The trackball is an Elecom EX6.

Thank you.

#MakersHelp
#TechHelp

Technical question.

I have an old Dell Windows 10 all-in-one desktop PC, getting a touch too old to run a few of my programmes without crashing.

We also have a fairly new Asus laptop (Win11) too damaged in the screen to be used as a laptop, but otherwise functional.

We've connected the laptop to the Dell screen with a HDMI cable. That side of things is fine.

But I've had to tell the Dell computer it can never turn off, or it goes to sleep, which switches its screen off. Obviously not ideal.

Is there any setting combo in which I can get the Dell computer to be off/sleeping, but its all-in-one monitor stays on so I can still use it with the Asus?

Hey all,

If I'm using CloneZilla to make a backup of my hard drives, how much space will that take up? 1:1? Is there any compression? How much?

I've got over a TB between my SSDs and I'd prefer not to have to buy a 1.5TB USB stick for the backup. But I will if that's what it takes.

thanks.

@Remittancegirl hope it’s reasonably easy to fix. Sorry, don’t know where I’d start, but I expect generous Mastodon souls will have ready suggestions.

Edit: I think I have it sorted. It is a browser thing.
Browser updates meant I couldn't find the setting.
Thank you.

Linux Cinnamon advice please.

When I download a document, it default saves to the Downloads folder.

Is there a way to have it ask where I want a file to be be saved so I can save it into the correct folder?

Sometimes a download has such a silly name that once in the Downloads folder I can't find it.

Thank you.

The unethical treatment by the local tech guys of my mum’s elderly neighbour is something to behold.

She’s had trouble with her email, iiNet, which sold off their email service and it stopped working for her (probably because she hadn’t paid the new company due to drowning in spam).

Took it to a computer shop, charged her $110 to tell her nothing’s wrong.

I got her set up with a replacement email.

All worked fine for a while, then something happened and her email stopped downloading and she had password problems.

A second computer shop charged her $90 to tell her they’d fixed it (except they looked at it for 2 minutes and didn’t give her a new password or anything).

I sorted it out as much as I could.

Password problems started up again the next day. I don’t know what’s happening, but before I can go back, she’s called in a third guy, supposed to be experienced with helping the elderly.

He sold her a new laptop.

What a fucking arsehole.

I just got the text to please come and help again, as the new laptop is having the same problems *quelle surprise*

Android question:

When I got a new phone, all my Google Play apps were automatically installed from a backup, and, crucially, the icons were arranged into folders in the same way.

On the other hand, I needed to manually reinstall all f-droid apps and recreate the layout of my home screen.

Is there a way to back up the organization of non-Google-Play apps on my home screen? This would make getting a new phone a lot more convenient.

Note that I am NOT asking about backing up app data: I already have backups of all app data I care about.

I have an unrooted Pixel 6a.

#Android #FDroid #TechHelp

My workstation crashes hard, whenever I leave it alone for long enough for the monitors to turn off. Once that happens, the machine is hard-locked. NumLock doesn't toggle, SSH'ing into the machine is not possible any more.

I'm running Kubuntu 24.04.2 LTS.

Does anyone know how to diagnose this? There's nothing in the dmesg / syslog, it just fully hangs.

Hey fedi, I want to move off Google services for email at some point soon but with Proton Mail and/or their CEO’s statement earlier this year I’m skeptical about using their platform.

What are the best competitors atm? And what are their advantages and disadvantages?

#askfedi #askfediverse #techhelp #degoogle

Hey Mac folks, have you ever used the sweet little app called "Grand Perspective”?

It's been in my toolkit of free and extremely useful tools for years.

It shows the files on a harddrive represented by large blocks... you can hover over them and see what they are.

The two biggest here are my iMovie Library (no “big” surprise) and iPhoto Library.

But there are also some I forgot about... like the Windows 11 partition (orange double block in the middle), or how big Civilization 6 is, (yellow on the right edge)

Love this app!!
#macOS #TechHelp

https://grandperspectiv.sourceforge.net

#techHelp #techSupport needed because I just can't right now...
Anyone with an #xbox one s and an #LG smart TV know why HDMI port detects the Xbox, says something briefly about SIMPLINK then says no input check external device power?
Tried 2 x HDMI cables and 2 x hdmi inputs on TV with no adaptors, tried two power cables as well...
Works fine with regular monitor and all updates done there.
#boostsAppreciated #boostsWelcomed #FediTech

My IOS mastodon app keeps crashing the moment I open it. Anyone else running into this?

I’m new to Discord as my university and a club I joined use it. I have some questions about the iOS app:
• How do I join servers? There’s a list from my university, but nothing happens when I double-tap them.
• I have two mentions, but I’m not sure how to view them while in a channel.

Any other tips on how Discord works and how to use it are most welcome! #Discord #TechHelp #Accessibility

hey, a forum i'm helping with has been being hit with a lot of non-bot-identified activity from guest browsers. this forum is pretty well established, but has not been active enough to warrant 50 guest users in 4 minutes.

assuming it's scrapers, does anyone have tips for circumventing them? i've provided a list of some entries for robots.txt already, but would love more tips.

Is there a good domain registrar? Preferably like, queer/left leaning, or at least not US based. I have Reclaim Hosting saved, but I'm not a teacher/student.

Hello, #Rstats people: I'm on linux and use #R2U for installing most packages. Well, right now I'm getting a timeout/not-found error for r2u.stat.illinois.edu

I'm trying to figure out the problem, but for now it would be really helpful if there was another r2u mirror/server. I am searching online and only finding this one. Is the whole r2u project really managed by only one server in Illinois? I am assuming there are other servers, but I can't find a list.

Any hints?

Got my tablet set up to ease out of the Kindle ecosystem. But when I went to download a book from calibre it wanted to open it in Google Books.

So what app do y'all use to read epubs on an Android device because I don't like the idea of uploading my books to Google Books to read.