@cstross Ubuntu on the RPi usually performs really nice. Are you experiencing issues after the switch to Wayland? Would the Ubuntu installer, e.g. run from a USB stick, allow you to install to the SSD?

The RPi imager is similarily more for writing bootable installation media, than whole systems, if I'm not mistaken.

For an image-based approach to booting ready Linux systems, you might like to look into @UniversalBlue, given it would run on arm64.

@cstross Another possibility it that your card reader doesn’t support SDUC standard, just SDXC, which maxes out at 2TB(assuming that by “SSD” you mean SD card)

@cstross FYI https://github.com/gitbls/sdm automatically writes GPT disks if GT 2TB, and can do smaller disks as well. A bit of a getting-started curve, but the dev is quite helpful if you have issues/questions.

@cstross
In the case of poor eyesight, Wayland is helpful: scaling is really helpful.

at some point in the last year, I accepted that it worked and was clearly smoother than X... But of course, there will be issues for a while more, just fewer and fewer.

(maybe KDE is the reason it works for me?)

@cstross

the world is on fire

with or without tentacled creatures trying to slurp our brains through our eyeballs?

But then, what's wrong with wayland? for the rest of the issues, how you generally deal with that is you resize the disk from within the installer itself, booting from sdcard first, where you have the image of the OS. About readability, gnome has afew accessibility features for that, including built-in zoom and magnifier, also high contrast mode which may or may not work properly depending on the app. Also, I recommend fedora's arm images for the pi, imo that's better than the rpi OS.

@cstross

@cstross I realised there may be a problem with the Linux desktop after my cataracts were fixed and I was shocked to see how large the fonts and icon settings were on my computer. The problem was, I had forgotten how I got them this way and it took me a while to set them back.
I also feel like some linux distros go like: "Oh look 4k monitor, let me get the smallest font I can find and set the screen to max resolution." I usually don't see what happens on a pi because I use them mostly headless.

@cstross gah, modern linux has SUCH a DPI problem. all the displays are high-DPI now but it's so terrible at supporting it that no matter what you do, you'll eventually run into at least one program that wants to display at 1:1 pixels and you need a magnifying glass to read it.

@cstross there’s a 2tb max for the boot drive for the pi I think. I ended up booting from a usb drive on a pi 5 so I couns have 4tb storage.

@cstross

You could just install #NetBSD. And remember to use ed(1) and not one of the newer abominations.

@cstross I was considering getting myself one of those pretties. I'll be interested to know what combination of elder runes eventually make it function!

@cstross Raspberry Pi's idea of large text is really really tiny.

You might be one of the longest-term Linux users I know. It's got easier in some ways (no IRQs to set up, no XF86Config) but weirder and more restricted in others (Raspberry Pi OS telling you exactly how their desktop must look, and reverting user changes)

@cstross /me sends sympathy

We've all been there.

@cstross Considering that this is Mastodon, I wonder how many people will answer „Just install Linux“ purely on reflex…

@cstross this is consistent with my experience of Linux

@cstross It's been about a century since the kernel was unable to use disks greater than 2TB... unless one builds a special one with the restriction.
No further comment.

@cstross computers are terrible.

@cstross What will you use it for? I have a Pi 400+ and thought it was really neat, but never really used it for much, so curious what people do with them.