The uni is not at fault here, the dorm is a separate entity that just happens to have a deal to keep some rooms for exchange students like me. The dorm is from iQ Student Accommodation (who told me I could bring a router), and the ISP they use is ASK4 (whose T&C you are seeing).

Thanks. I do unfortunately need wifi to do wireless VR streaming... I guess I need to find a way to tune it to interfere the least, but this is a whole alien world to me.

y e p, I feel your pain (but I know way less about networking than it seems like you do haha, still haven't made the jump to ipv6 myself)

I'm in the UK, not sure if they have their own british version of the FCC or just follow their rules but it might be different. The router/AP is a tp link Archer C6, which I use as it is performant enough to do VR streaming w/o stutters or high latency.

That's fair yeah. In my case the dorms are a separate unrelated company from the uni (they just have a partnership) and the ISP is yet another third party that did the install and sells extras to each student. I think it's pretty scummy since I read my whole dorm contract and it never said this would be a condition to the "free fast wifi" access.

Interesting about hiding SSIDs, I never knew why that option existed. I'm here on Erasmus so I don't want to risk too much by knowingly breaking rules... them triangulating it to my room and starting a legal case or something sounds real scary.

My Ubuntu server (which has been working for a few years now) recently asked me in a full-screen prompt while updating something about GRUB. There was a list of partitions with just one element, which is the partition that GRUB os on. I was focused on something else so I just hit enter, but now I am really scared to reboot it. Is there any way to pull this back up or to double-check that everything is ok with the machine?

Do you mean Obtainium? I use it to download apps not available on F-Droid, but I can't use it to actually browse/use GitHub. I will clarify in my OP :)

Yep! You can just paste the URL of the blog into your reader (or try https://blog.allpurposem.at/feed/ if that doesn't work).

I'm using a reMarkable Linux tablet and it's been awesome. There's a bunch of apps ported to it if you're okay with using an older software release, and they give you full root access. Not FOSS or open hardware like Pine64 but really good experience and does not feel too limited.

I use Bitwarden and, though all the features are very nice (self hosted Vaultwarden), the clients are really bad. The autofill is super inconsistent on Android. The app takes 20s+ to load on my Pixel 3a. You can't trigger a sync from the quick autofill menu, you have to open the full app. The "desktop app" is just an embedded browser. I really want to like it, but it doesn't make it easy.

I'm seeing others recommend the G14 2022 all-AMD one. I have owned this model since it released and use it nearly every day. Despite the performance being pretty okay, it does have its share of deal-breakers which, if I knew them at the time, I would not have bought it:

• random freezing, this affects some units most zen3 amd laptops and it seems I got unlucky. ASUS has been ignoring the issue for a year despite the crashes being reproducible on Windows (Windows recovers from it while Linux just freezes)
• short stutters due to fTPM. Hopefully once Arch updates the kernel to include the recent patch that blacklists all AMD fTPMs fixes this, for now you have to email ASUS to get a secret BIOS that allows disabling it
• nonfunctional vfio (code 43) without patching BIOS variables with a sketchy script (have to disable rebar), rebinding after shutting down the vm still does not work at all for me
• overheating while gaming, even with fans forced to max
• wifi constantly disconnects. I mostly fixed it by buying a AX210 card from Intel
• bottom shell is super brittle and cracked when unscrewing it

The laptop itself would be the best Linux experience I've had if not for these issues. The trackpad is excellent and great for Wayland 1:1 gestures, the display and speakers are great, and the battery lasts a good 2-3h with light web browsing.