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Unintentionallyinspirational

@unintentionallyinspirational

For the record, accidentally tapping on Tumblr live when it randomly appears every week does not count as using Tumblr live for the sake of this poll. This is only referring to purposeful use of the feature.

I'd appreciate it if people could share this for a larger sample size!

I don't get it :(

every browser except firefox runs on chromium. they are just chrome reskins. firefox is the only good browser. install firefox

Firefox does a ton of cool shit but just out of the box, fresh install it does less tracking and dataharvesting than Chrome (in that it does essentially none while chrome's goal is to crawl all the way into your asshole and monetize the data of the unique features of your intestinal lining) and does not contribute to the chromium near-monopoly (Firefox and Safari are the only non-chromium browsers with any notable market share).

Also you know how Adobe fucking sucks and is really annoying and it's frustrating to have to use their PDF reader? Firefox now comes with a built-in PDF reader AND editor. Check this shit out:

Firefox also has a feature called Multi Account Containers that allows you to log in to accounts in different containers so that you don't have to open up an incognito window or log out of various services to use a different account. For instance, I have my Work container and my School container and I can log in to office 365 in either one of them without having to log out of the other, or I can have seven tabs logged in to seven different tumblr accounts (not sideblogs, separate accounts) in the same window if I want to do that for any reason.

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A couple job interview hacks from someone who has to give a job interview every single goddamn day: (disclaimer: this goes for my process and my company’s process, other companies and industries might be different)

1. There are a few things I check and a few questions I ask literally just to figure out if you can play the game and get along with others in a professional setting. Part of the job I interview for is talking to people, and we work in teams. So if you can’t “play the game” a tiny bit, it’s not going to work. Playing the game includes:

- Why do you want to work here? (just prove that you googled the company, tell me like 1 thing about us, I just want to know that you did SOME kind of preparation for this interview)

- Are you wearing professional clothing? I don’t need a suit just don’t show up in a ratty t-shirt and sweatpants.

- Are you able to speak respectfully and without dropping f-bombs all the time? Not because I’m offended but because I don’t want to be reported to HR if you wind up on my team.

- Can you follow simple directions in an interview?

2. Stop telling me protected information. I don’t want to know about what drugs or medications you’re on, I don’t want to know about you being sick, I don’t want to know if you’re planning to have children soon, I don’t want to know anything about your personal life other than “can you do the job?” 

3. When we ask, “What questions do you have for me?” here are my favorites I’ve heard: - What does the day-to-day look like for a member of your team?

- If one of your team members was not performing up to his usual standard, what steps would you take to correct that?

- What can I start doing now to accelerate my learning process in this job?

- What are some reservations you have about me as a candidate? (be ready for this emotionally….it will REALLY help you in the future, and I’ve had people save themselves from a No after this, but can be hard to hear)

- In your opinion, what skills and qualities does the ideal candidate for this job possess?

- What advice would you give to a new hire in this position/someone who wanted to break into this industry, as someone who has worked here for a while?

Those are just my tips off-the-cuff. I work in sales in marketing/SAAS, so these can be very different depending on the industry, but I wish the people I interview could read this before they show up. 

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Learn to blacklist

Instead of adding #f-slur #tw f-slur #f-slur cw #slurs to someone's positivity post, you can just filter those words out. It is infinitely simpler and less aggravating for all

On desktop

  1. Top right, click the Account icon
  2. Click settings
  3. Scroll down to "Content you see"
  4. Ignore filtered tags
  5. Put every single word, concept, and tumblr user that mildly upsets you in here

On mobile

  1. Swipe right to your Tumblr page
  2. Hit the gear button to open your account settings
  3. Scroll down and click "Content you see"
  4. Filtered Post Content +New
  5. Put every single word, concept, and tumblr user that mildly upsets in here

Test it out for yourself. Add "zoobus" and strike me from your dash

Found this reddit post. This kinda makes me feel better. And it’s something I think about sometimes because I always feel like regardless of how hard I work on something I don’t get anywhere.

Nice summary. If you’re curious, the anon here is referring to studies over the last decade that have pointed to major impacts on pattern separation with depression, and how depression can have major impacts on nonsynaptic plasticity

dear non-spanish speakers writing spiderverse fanfiction (or anything with spanglish),

in spanglish you don’t switch by word, you switch by phrase.

it’s not:

“[first part of the sentence in english], [second part of the sentence in english], mi amor.”

“[full english sentence], querida.”

it’s:

“[first part of the sentence in english], [segunda parte de la frase en español], mi amor.”

-

also miles is boricua, miguel is mexican. they have two different accents and use different vocabulary for certain words.

also miles is “nyourican” - a puerto rican native to new york - while his mom is directly from the island, so there are differences there, too, because his spanish is more influence by new york english. 

here’s some good references that aren’t google translate (which usually pulls from spain, a country that speaks vastly differently from latin america)

here have some random videos on different slang/spanish accents:

-

in spanish most words are gendered, so most feminine words end in a and masculine/gender neutral words end in o. adding ito/ita makes something cuter, smaller and more affectionate.

spanish nicknames that aren’t “mi amor

  • “querido/a” - darling
  • “cariño” - dear (always masculine regardless, of who its being said to)
  • “mi princesa/príncipe” - my prince/princess
  • “mi rey/reina” - my king/queen
  • “papí/mamí” - can be used in any way; romantic, sexual, familial for one’s parent or child, or just platonically
  • “tesoro” - treasure

also spanish is a language that uses adjectives as terms of affection both cute ones and ones that might sound insensitive in english

  • gordo (fat), flaco (skinny), negro (black), blanco (white), linda (pretty), bella (beautiful), morena (brown skin), etc.

and like most languages that are not english, spanish has multiple ways of saying i love you.

  • te amo” - romantic
  • te quiero” - familial, platonic (although there’s nothing wrong with using it romantically)

see also:

  • te adoro - i adore you
  • te deseo - i want you
  • te necesito - i need you

 and, of course, they can vary regionally too.

please use this because i have read a lot of really well written things that take me out of it because the use of spanglish is terrible. don’t just go on your presumptions that spanish/spanglish works in the same way that english does.

buena suerte, gringos.

- signed your friendly neighborhood afro-latina

reblog if your name isn't Amanda.

2,121,566 people are not Amanda and counting!

We’ll find you Amanda.

this has almost 11 million notes what is this

I’ve never seen this post once in 10 years on this site

I’ve never even heard of this before tho??? Wtf??????????

oh my god, I didn’t think there were any surviving versions of this post left

For those who weren’t around in the Deep Lore times, this is one of the relics of the editable post era. This post has THE SINGLE HIGHEST NOTES of ANY post on this site, bar none, but with more than a dozen variations. Every single post you’ve ever seen with more than 3 million notes has been a different version of this one.

This is the “Dean’s Gym Shorts” post. This is the Flubber post. This is the original “Reblog if you support gay people” post. it was ALL of them. before half the site got nuked, it had even more notes than it has now - at one point, well over 15 million, and that was years ago.

This, with no exaggeration, is the ONE TRUE heritage post

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#i don’t even know why THIS one is the one that got popular #the ORIGINAL original was a vent post from an anorexia blog that deleted in want to say 2009? #so going ultraviral the way it did is insane

The largest mass shooting in American history was a hate crime against gay people. Don’t ever forget that.

June 12, 2016. Putting a date on this for when it gets reblogged months from now by people who think the post is about something from 30, 40 years ago.

I am a survivor of the Pulse nightclub shooting, having grown up in Orlando and just turned 20 a month prior. If you didn’t know, there were several families who refused to claim the bodies of their relatives due to their sexuality. One family even had their relative’s name removed from the memorial. Murdered by the same hate with which their families reject them in both life and death.

Many, many people celebrated Pulse. We were told we deserved it. That it was God’s punishment for our sin of loving the same sex. We are sent messages like these I received in 2018:

We in the community often call the victim count 49+ to include the survivors who couldn’t live with the pain.

The event was never officially declared a hate crime or targeted homophobic attack and is rarely listed as one in databases.

At our vigils for those slaughtered, Extremist Christian groups showed up to protest, holding signs like this:

ID: Me kissing a woman I was casually seeing in front of an angry looking man with a “Sodomy is Sin” sign.

Please understand how much more than just a mass shooting this was. We are still to this day harassed and told we deserved it by some.

This year was the sixth anniversary. The first couple years I received dozens of messages checking in on me on 6/12. Year 5 got enough news coverage for people to think to reach out to me. This year it was my therapist, the woman I kissed in that photo, and a couple of other gun violence survivor friends. People are forgetting already.

With the 7 year anniversary <2 weeks away, I figured I’d reblog this

y'all need to listen to better country music before I start bitin you. it's an entire genre with good n bad like any other. go listen to Johnny Cash or somethin you fuckin losers

and don't think just bc I name dropped Cash that there ain't any good modern country, there's a fuck ton of it

some of my personal favorites are Jason Isbell, The Steeldrivers (of which Chris Stapleton was a founding member, though he's solo now), The Highwomen, Amigo the Devil, Drive-By Truckers, Poor Man's Poison, Hellbound Glory, Delta Rae, Goodnight Texas, Colter Wall, Paul Cauthen, HARDY (and since I linked wait in the truck, it's worth mentioning that Lainey Wilson is fantastic on her own as well), and Gillian Welch

and before anyone starts with that "it's all white people" that ain't true neither. there's a BUNCH of great black country artists like Willie Jones (who has a new album comin out soon), Amythyst Kiah, Blanco Brown, Mickey Guyton, The War and Treaty (a husband and wife duo who do gorgeous love songs), Breland, Shy Carter, Brittney Spencer, Allison Russell, Jimmie Allen (who does more "typical" country if country fusion isn't your speed), Kane Brown, and the supergroup Our Native Daughters just to name a few

not to mention in the past several years we've seen an incredible queer country movement! I'm not gonna link y'all to Orville Peck and Lil Nas X bc I'm tryin to broaden your horizons (though they're both incredible don't get me wrong). check out Sam Williams (grandson of country legend Hank Williams and son of the equally iconic Hank Williams Jr), Mya Byrne (for all my trans folks), Shane McAnally, Waylon Payne, Joy Oladokun, Paisley Fields, Katie Pruitt, Ty Herndon, Brandi Carlile, Brooke Eden, and Shelly Fairchild

(note some previously mentioned artists like Amythyst Kiah and Allison Russell are queer and some artists on my queer list are people of color, because those ain't separate categories and there's a lot of overlap!)

now go forth, enjoy, and quit sayin dumb shit about an incredibly diverse music genre

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I’ll add Jeremie Albino, Yola, Valerie June and Rhiannon Giddens to the artists of color list.

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Della Mae, the Wailin' Jennys (THE NAME ALONE??? HELLO), William Prince, Ghost of Paul Revere are all on the folksy side and so fucking good

okay i don't mean to be dramatic but it's downright evil how doctors (don't) treat people with chronic headaches

and i am purposely saying "chronic headaches," even though MOST chronic headaches are migraines, because i know it took me a loooong time to realize i had migraines. and ultimately the distinction doesn't matter insofar as people in chronic pain deserve access to safe, effective treatment. and this is (needlessly, cruelly) not the case for so many people with chronic headache/migraine, many of whom have to jump through hoops for insurance companies before they can get the treatment that actually works.

there's been a recent proposal to redefine chronic migraine as anyone who gets more than 8 headaches per month, because that was found to be as disabling as the current criteria (more than 15 per month). and it's just so upsetting at how many people are just. suffering without treatment.

based on the tags this post is getting! hi hello it's me the migraine fairy, here to tell you that if you're getting headaches most days of your life without any underlying injury/cause etc, these are most likely migraines. not headaches. despite common perception, migraine does not mean "extremely painful headache." it's a neurological condition that includes many symptoms, of which pain (mild to severe) is one. you may be having these other symptoms (fatigue, sensitivity to sensory input like light/sound/smell, nausea, auras, brain fog, digestive upset, etc) without necessarily linking them to your headache, and these symptoms can start before the pain and last for hours/days.

if at all possible, please see a neurologist! despite the crankiness of my original post, there ARE amazing treatments and preventatives available. you will probably have to jump through some hoops, as the op suggested, but. it's worth it to find some relief.

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learning from the reblogs of that post that there's a lot of people out there under the impression that "kill your darlings" means "kill your characters" and that's the funniest possible interpretation of that phrase

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since a couple people sent asks: it means you can't be precious about your own writing when the time comes to edit. sometimes you will write a really good scene, or a really good line, or a really good description. it will be your new favorite thing you've ever written. the kind of thing you want to post on tumblr attributed to "the book i haven't written yet" because it's just that good. but when the whole thing is done and you're reading it over, it just. it doesn't actually work. it stands out like a sore thumb. it fucks up the pacing, or maybe once you've really got a handle on characters you realize it's ooc. "kill your darlings" is about learning to delete those bits, even though they're really good, because they're making the work as a whole worse.

... but a lot of people i know don't actually delete them because it's 2023 and you can just cut and paste them into a different document titled "bits" until you write something where they'll fit. and sometimes it actually does fit in the work, but you tried to put it in the wrong place or in the mouth of the wrong character. but learning that you can put a lot of excellent paragraphs together to make a story that's worse than the sum of its parts is the important part.

reminder to:

  • straighten your back
  • go pee goddAMN IT STOP HOLDING IT
  • go take your meds if you need to
  • drink some water
  • go get a snack if you havent eaten in a while
  • maybe wander around the house/stretch a little if you’ve been sat at the computer a while (artists especially: sTRETCH THOSE WRISTS)
  • reply to that text/message from earlier you’d forgotten about
  • maybe send a nice lil message to someone having a bad day?

I just would like to thank everyone who ever reblogs this so that it somehow ends up back on my dash because I usually need the reminder (especially the drinking water one)

Of all posts to see with a million notes, I’m glad it’s this one.

Things that will make your computer meaningfully faster:

  • Replacing a HDD with an SSD
  • Adding RAM
  • Graphics cards if you're nasty
  • Uninstalling resource hogs like Norton or McAfee (if you're using Windows then the built-in Windows Security is perfectly fine; if you're using a mac consider bitdefender as a free antivirus or eset as a less resource intensive paid option)
  • Customizing what runs on startup for your computer

Things that are likely to make internet browsing specifically meaningfully faster:

  • Installing firefox and setting it up with ublock origin
  • adding the Auto Tab Discard extension to firefox to sleep unused tabs so that they aren't constantly reloading
  • Closing some fucking tabs bud I'm sorry I know it hurts I'm guilty of this too

Things that will make your computer faster if you are actually having a problem:

  • Running malwarebytes and shutting down any malicious programs it finds.
  • Correcting disk utilization errors

Things that will make your computer superficially faster and may slightly improve your user experience temporarily:

  • Clearing cache and cookies on your browser
  • Restarting the computer
  • Changing your screen resolution
  • Uninstalling unused browser extensions

Things that do not actually make your computer faster:

  • Deleting files
  • Registry cleaners
  • Defragging your drive
  • Passively wishing that your computer was faster instead of actually just adding more fucking RAM.

This post is brought to you by the lady with the 7-year-old laptop that she refuses to leave overnight for us to run scans on or take apart so that we can put RAM in it and who insists on coming by for 30-minute visits hoping we can make her computer faster.

There are people saying "what does this mean" so:

Meaningfully Faster

  • HDD means "hard disk drive" SSD means "solid state drive." An HDD has a spinning platter and a mechanical arm that has to wiggle back and forth very quickly to read the information written on the platter, while an SSD is a silicon chip that has the information "flashed" into it (basically it takes a snapshot of bits with electricity - it's unimportant how it works, just that it doesn't require mechanical movement to access data, and is therefore MUCH faster).
  • Installing an SSD does *not* require an M.2 slot and does *not* require a ton of expertise on most computers. There are many SATA SSDs available and if you want to replace your HDD all that you need to do is clone your hard drive and look up how to install your new SSD on ifixit (link in a bit).
  • Your storage drive (SSD or HDD) is the drive that stores the files and programs on your computer. People often confuse long-term drive storage with "memory" and when they get low-memory warnings they think they need to delete stored files. This is inaccurate because:
  • RAM is Random Access Memory - if is basically the "working memory" of your computer, it keeps track of all the things that your computer does/is doing. For example: if you are working in your browser, the browser is not saving everything that you're doing to your desktop so everything that is going on in your browser is using RAM to remember what pages you've got open and what images are on them, etc. Same if you're working in any other program: if you're writing a word doc and you haven't saved it in a while, all the changes are being tracked by the RAM but are not yet saved on your storage drive. "Low Memory" doesn't mean you're out of room for your computer to hold onto files, it means your computer is low on memory to think about stuff. Because programs are written to use more and more memory as time passes (which is a good thing, for the most part, but causes frustrating problems for people with older devices) older computers will struggle to run modern programs with the amount of RAM the older computers have in them.
  • RAM comes in different speeds, and the speed of your RAM does matter but if you get RAM that matches the speed of your installed RAM you should experience better speeds from your computer. Some computers have the RAM directly soldiered to the motherboard and cannot have RAM added (this is pretty much true of all macs. I do not recommend buying macs.) but if your computer DOES allow you to add RAM it is generally an easy process - check IFixIt.Com for instructions: just search the model number of your computer and look at the replacement guide for RAM and you will be able to see if you can replace your RAM and see the steps to follow along if you want to do that. There are a large number of tools to look up what RAM will work in your computer. Personally I like the Crucial RAM Configurator tool. Just look up your computer and it will recommend compatible RAM. You don't have to buy the Crucial RAM, you can use the Crucial RAM configurator to get the specs you need and then search for yourself by Size, Memory Technology, Speed, Format, and number of Pins.
  • Graphics cards are for graphics processing and they're "if you're nasty" because adding a dedicated graphics card is kind of a big hurdle these days: computers are smaller inside than they used to be and graphics cards are big and they are also very expensive right now. Unless you are using a gaming laptop you likely cannot add a graphics card to your laptop, and unless you have at least a couple hundred dollars to spare you can't add a graphics card to your desktop either. But also they will only speed up a very specific subset of applications; if you don't do anything that requires a GPU to get shit done (video rendering, really complicated math, etc) then it isn't going to make your computer faster.
  • Norton and McAfee run in the background of your computer at all times and can suck up a lot of valuable memory, especially if they decide to randomly start a scan or check back in with the mothership to make sure you've paid for another seven years. They are annoying and they can slow everything else down - McAfee in particular is notorious for this. Modern Windows Operating systems (10 and 11) have a lot of security features built in at baseline and Windows Defender is a perfectly functional whole-device antivirus for almost all users. It was never true that macs couldn't have software infections or couldn't be infected with malware, it's just that *people used to write fewer malicious softwares for mac( and NOW there are a lot more infections written for OSX *and* mac users often think they don't need antivirus. Buds. You do need antivirus. Since Bitdefender only has a free virus scanner for Mac, not antivirus, and Sophos Free is only good for a month, and Avast has recently sold customer data, try Avira.
  • If you hit Ctrl+Alt+Del and click on "task manager" you will find a list of applications that run on startup. Programs that run on startup are turned on and active every time you start your computer, regardless of whether you use the program or not. So, for instance, let's say you have an HP printer and there are drivers for the printer on your computer but you only print things maybe twice a year. If your HP Printer Print Utility is set to run on startup that means that every time you start your computer it wakes up and turns on this program, which slows down your startup time and takes processing power in the background. So just disable it on startup and only start the program when you need it. The only difference here is that it'll take a few seconds to start the utility when it's time to print. Things that I've got disabled on startup include: Microsoft Edge, Adobe, and Cortana.

Faster Browsing

  • You should be using Firefox anyway because Firefox rules and in literally hundreds of tests performs as well or better than chrome. If someone says that firefox is ridiculously slow it is because they've either set up a really weird configuration, have had the install go wrong, or just don't understand what they're doing. But ASIDE from that you should use Firefox with Ublock Origin because Ublock Origin is an *amazing* adblocker that doesn't whitelist ads and lets you do things like manage cookies and block annoying popups and a bunch of other stuff. And as of 2023 it will be impossible to install Ublock Origin on Chrome so you may as well switch to Firefox now and live that ad-free life. Ad-blocked browsing speeds up your browser because your computer isn't spending extra energy on loading ads and less shit loading means less RAM utilization means faster computing.
  • Auto Tab Discard is an extension that allows you to set tabs to sleep after an amount of time that you determine. You can customize your experience so that it doesn't sleep tabs with partially filled forms, or doesn't sleep tabs with media playing in them, or doesn't sleep a specific tab for a session, or doesn't ever sleep tabs from a specific website. Many people use OneTab, which basically turns your tabs into a bookmark list that opens the page when you click in OneTab, but I personally prefer Auto Tab Discard - neither of those are "better" than the other, it's just a question of what works for you.

Faster if you are having an actual problem

  • Open tabs eat RAM. Your computer is expending memory thinking about what's on all of those pages and even if most of them are slept you probably have more awake tabs than you need.
  • Malwarebytes has a free virus/malware scanning and removal tool that you can download and run to identify and remove malware or viruses that may be stealing your information and running background programs that are fucking up your speeds. If you think your computer might be slow because you might have a virus, go to malwarebytes, download the free version, run a scan, and follow the instructions that it gives you.
  • Disk utilization errors happen for a number of reasons and they will all slow down your computer. Here are some of the reasons they happen and some ways to fix them. If you hare having a persistent disk usage error issue *DO NOT* replace your HDD with an SSD until it is resolved because these errors can destroy an SSD.

Superficially Faster

  • Your browser cache and cookies are the things that your browser remembers between sessions: it might be logins for various sites or the logos of your homepage or a bunch of other stuff. If your browser is running super slow because you haven't cleared cache/cookies for a long time, doing this can help because it will basically make your browser forget about the cookies it has been carrying around for five years for a site you haven't logged into since four years and seven months ago. These are tiny pieces of data but they can add up over time which is why they will make your browsing experience faster if you haven't done it in years but won't make a difference if you clear your cookies and cache monthly. Doing this will log you out of all the sites you're logged into (which shouldn't be a huge deal, but you do need to be ready to log in a bunch, so you should HAVE A PASSWORD MANAGER TO MAKE THAT EASIER). This will make your browser run a bit faster, but if your computer is slow for non-browser reasons or if your cache/cookies have been cleared recently it will have no impact on your computer speeds.
  • Restarting your computer will speed your computer up for a bit because it will shut down all the programs you had running and clear your computer's RAM of all the stuff it was remembering for as long as you had those programs open. This is, again, a superficial improvement, and if you have, say, restarted your computer three times today it is unlikely that restarting again will do anything for you. But yeah if it's been a couple weeks, friend, restart your computer it is tired and it wants to run patches and it needs to forget the twenty docs you're editing for a minute so it can get its head on straight.
  • Reducing your screen resolution can make your computer run a bit faster if you're doing graphics-heavy stuff and have really shit built-in graphics support, but realistically all it is likely to do is make your computer look weird.
  • Your browser extensions run on startup and cause your browser to use more RAM at baseline; you should be installing minimal browser extensions and uninstalling any that you don't need. If it's been a while since you checked your extensions go uninstall the unused ones right now and restart the browser and you may speed up a bit. But the majority of people in the world run pretty minimal extensions so this is unlikely to fix most people's problems.

Will not make your computer faster

  • Unless your storage drive is within 10% of its maximum capacity it is in no way fucking up your speed. If it is within 10% of capacity go delete whatever's in your downloads folder, clear out your temp files, and empty your recycle bin. If that doesn't take care of it, use a backup drive or a thumb drive and copy off the photos, videos, and music you don't use very often, and only keep what you're using on your computer. If you've got an SSD having too little storage available can fuck with the lifespan, so aim to keep at least 10% free.
  • Registry cleaners are supposed to clean your computer's registry; basically they're supposed to look at the index of all the stuff your computer knows and delete redundant or outdated entries on the index. However it has been literal decades since a registry cleaner would be able to meaningfully improve performance while they can still absolutely fuck your computer up bad enough that it needs a reinstall and a lot of them are just straight up malware, some of them are actual for-realsies ransomware, a bunch of them sell your data, and you don't need ANY of them. If you don't know enough to fuck around with your registry by hand you shouldn't trust some random ass software that has a history of data breaches and virus infections associated with it. Fuck all registry cleaners.
  • Manual drive defragging has been obsolete on Windows Machines since Windows 7 shipped with an automatic defragging utility in 2011. In the past when you saved a file to a hard drive it might save that file in a bunch of little pieces scattered all over the platter, so accessing that file meant accessing all the *fragments* of that file and "defragging" meant taking some time every once in a while to put files together into whole files instead of fragments. But then eleven years ago Windows made that process automatic, so unless you have *seriously* fucked up your computer somehow it shouldn't be an issue, and if it is an issue you can run a defrag and then make sure automatic defragging is enabled. But that whole conversation is probably moot since SSDs don't need to be defragmented (and defragging them actually adds to the device wear). So basically if your computer actually DOES need a defrag it is probably more fucked than you initially thought and unless that is the case then it is already defragging so doing an additional defrag won't make anything faster and/or might cause extra wear to an SSD.

If you are using an older computer and it is tortuously slow and you can't upgrade the RAM or swap in an SSD but you *can* install software, I would strongly recommend installing Linux.

The vast majority of people these days use computers primarily for web browsing and occasionally use an office suite. Most people don't even store their music or photos on their computers these days. If your computer is basically an internet machine that you don't use for anything other than browsing and basic word processing/spreadsheets, then there is no reason not to switch to Linux.

I would recommend installing Linux Lite, which is a well-supported, widely-used distro that most computers built within the last twenty years should be able to run. It's called "Lite" because it is an operating system that requires minimal processing, storage, and memory to run.

To do this you will need:

  • A 4GB USB stick or a blank DVD to create installation media
  • An internet connection to download the software
  • Another computer or phone that you can use to follow the instructions, or a printed/written copy of the installation guide
  • A computer on which to install Linux. Installing Linux as the sole operating system on this computer (which is my recommendation here) will mean that everything else on the computer is deleted. Save all of your files/movies/music/etc. to a backup drive or another computer before you install Linux, because installing a new OS will delete literally everything on the computer and make it impossible to get back.

Here is the Linux Lite help manual, I've linked you directly to the step-by-step installation guide. If you get to a step that you don't understand, search the terms that you're unfamiliar with phrased as questions like "why do I need an ISO to install linux?" or "how do I enter UEFI BIOS on my version of Windows?"

Follow the instructions for installing Linux Lite, and then you can install software on your new OS. Linux Lite comes bundled with Libre Office, which is a free office suite like Microsoft Office that has programs similar to Word, Excel, and Powerpoint. It installs with Chrome, so I would recommend installing Firefox and uninstalling Chrome as soon as you're able to get on the internet.

After that you can pick and choose from a wide variety of linux-compatible software and you can use your computer as a regular computer. I'd say that it's probably a good idea to be picky about what software you install, and to try to keep your computer as lean as possible if you're trying to get a longer life out of an old device.

There are a lot of people in the notes who are saying "my computer can't even load four tabs" or "my computer can't even open the software I need to do this" and if that is your computer I think you've pretty much got nothing to lose from installing Linux. If your computer is essentially unusable in Windows then it's probably not going to be *less* functional in Linux, unless you're keeping the computer the way that it is for some very specific software you're using.

A lot of people think that they can't uses Linux because it's entirely in the command line or doesn't have a graphic interface or something, but most linux distros only look about as different to users as windows does to mac or vice versa.

This is what the Linux Lite default desktop looks like:

It's got a start menu and a task bar and folders on the desktop, same as any other computer. It's very easy to use and has the help manual installed right there as soon as you're up and running so that you can troubleshoot your way through any issues.

Really, seriously: if your computer is slow as fuck and all you use it for is web browsing, this will make your computing experience significantly better without having to buy anything but a thumb drive.

People are reblogging just the first section of this post and asking what these things mean, so I'm reblogging this in hopes that they'll see the comprehensive update in the notes.