May 12 2026 Armbian, ReiserFS, auto-save

With only three people in attendance, the meeting mostly consisted of gentle conversation.

David unboxed an extension lead for a Micro SD which avoids having to insert Micro SDs into fiddly slots. There are now FT serial port to USB adapters for the Orange Pi4 LTS, the Libre Computer Board AML-S905X-CC, otherwise known as ‘Le potato’ and Raspberry Pi 3. Armbian seems to be one that everything coalesces around. It supports 339 boards and some producers offer Platinum support. They have a fully open build system creating images which are reproducible. However, you have to download firmware blobs from manufacturers and they are hardly ever updated. A particular blob cannot use older firmware.

Darren asked about moving things from a ReiserFS partition and it was pointed out that ReiserFS was supported in Linux up to 6.12. Also GParted recognises it.

John mentioned that, when trying to help a Windows user, he had found that auto-save now saves to the cloud and so needs in Internet connection. His brother had explained to him that the old Microsoft auto-save is called auto-recover as it just saves what is needed to recover a file whereas the new auto-save saves to a separate file.

John commented that that explained a difference between LyX and LibreOffice. LyX has always auto-saved but to a local file, not one on the cloud, whereas LibreOffice, in Microsoft’s new terminology, auto-recovers files if necessary.

Past Meetings