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u/nigh-knight

r/Logo_Design_Critique r/AestheticWiki r/design_critiques r/y2kaesthetic r/Skeuomorphism r/ProgrammerHumor r/NixOS r/linux4noobs r/FrutigerAero r/UI_Design r/metalheart
▲ 0 r/linux4noobs

I'm 20. I can't afford a second home. So I trying to build one in the cloud with a FUSE filesystem and NixOS.

TL;DR:
My dad takes my main laptop every night so I decided to work on building a seamless second machine that picks up exactly where I left off. I have most of the pieces but I'm stuck on some specifics and figured this community would know.

I'm looking to turn a $300 ASUS Chromebook Flip CX3 into a "second home" for my data using NixOS, a custom FUSE filesystem I built called kplr, and aggressive memory tuning. I want my Chromebook to picks up exactly where I left off.

The Chromebook Hardware

  • ASUS Chromebook Flip CX3 (CX3400FMA)
  • Intel Celeron N4500
  • 8GB RAM (soldered, yes I know, no I can't fix it)
  • 64GB eMMC

In summary: a potato I am forcing to run a real desktop OS.

The "Second Home" Concept

My dad takes my laptop at night. I need my workflow to continue on the Chromebook with zero friction. I'm thinking of using:

  • My personal project kplr (my own project, private for now) that will mount to ~/keplr via FUSE. It shards files with Shamir's Secret Sharing (2-of-3), encrypts with AES-256-GCM, and distributes across Google Drive, Dropbox, and OneDrive, its essentially a unified sharded file storage solution using free storage, where no one site has all the files. Both devices can share the same manifest. When my dad takes the laptop, the Chromebook already has everything via the same cloud backends.
  • Librewolf Sync for tabs, same session on both devices.
  • Kitty sessions (kitty --session) for terminal layout restore.

The OS

NixOS on both. The entire setup, FUSE mount with kplr, zram, Librewolf config, Kitty config, lives in configuration.nix so that rebuilding the Chromebook produces the exact same environment as the laptop.

The Background program

A systemd service watches ~/Downloads and ~/Videos and other directories for changes. Files older than 10 days or larger than 100MB get sharded to kplr automatically and replaced with stubs locally.

What I'm Actually Asking

  1. FUSE caching: How do you make a FUSE filesystem feel like a local drive? Right now the first open of any file has noticeable latency because it's fetching from cloud backends. I want the second open to be instant. Is there a standard pattern for read-ahead caching inside a FUSE implementation
  2. Sway + Kitty session save: Has anyone written a script that captures a Sway workspace layout and Kitty window state at the same time, so a single command on the second device restores everything, apps in position, terminal splits and all?
  3. eMMC performance on NixOS: 64GB eMMC has genuinely terrible random write performance. Are there mount options (noatime, relatime, specific schedulers) that help? I've also seen people move the Nix store build directories to a tmpfs RAM disk so rebuilds don't thrash the eMMC, has anyone actually done this and is it worth the complexity?
  4. FUSE as a sync layer instead of Syncthing: Is anyone using a custom FUSE mount as their primary cross-device file access layer instead of something like Syncthing? My main concern is manifest consistency, what happens if both devices write to the same path at the same time before either has synced? How do you handle conflict resolution cleanly?

RAM survival tactics I'm already planning (thoughts welcome)

  • zram swap at 50% RAM, zstd compression
  • LibreWolf dom.ipc.processCount capped at 4 (down from default 8)
  • MOZ_ENABLE_WAYLAND=1 to skip XWayland overhead
  • Tab unloading via about:unloads triggered by memory pressure, not a timer
  • NixOS build limits: max-jobs = 1, cores = 2, MemoryMax = 3G on nix-daemon, without this nixos-rebuild takes the whole machine down with it

Happy to share more about kplr once it's in a shareable state. Mostly just want to know if questions 1–4 have obvious answers I'm missing.

reddit.com
u/nigh-knight — 13 days ago
▲ 9 r/NixOS

I'm 20. I can't afford a second home. So I trying to build one in the cloud with a FUSE filesystem and NixOS.

TL;DR:
My dad takes my main laptop every night so I decided to work on building a seamless second machine that picks up exactly where I left off. I have most of the pieces but I'm stuck on some specifics and figured this community would know.

I'm looking to turn a $300 ASUS Chromebook Flip CX3 into a "second home" for my data using NixOS, a custom FUSE filesystem I built called kplr, and aggressive memory tuning. I want my Chromebook to picks up exactly where I left off.

The Chromebook Hardware

  • ASUS Chromebook Flip CX3 (CX3400FMA)
  • Intel Celeron N4500
  • 8GB RAM (soldered, yes I know, no I can't fix it)
  • 64GB eMMC

In summary: a potato I am forcing to run a real desktop OS.

The "Second Home" Concept

My dad takes my laptop at night. I need my workflow to continue on the Chromebook with zero friction. I'm thinking of using:

  • My personal project kplr (my own project, private for now) that will mount to ~/keplr via FUSE. It shards files with Shamir's Secret Sharing (2-of-3), encrypts with AES-256-GCM, and distributes across Google Drive, Dropbox, and OneDrive, its essentially a unified sharded file storage solution using free storage, where no one site has all the files. Both devices can share the same manifest. When my dad takes the laptop, the Chromebook already has everything via the same cloud backends.
  • Librewolf Sync for tabs, same session on both devices.
  • Kitty sessions (kitty --session) for terminal layout restore.

The OS

NixOS on both. The entire setup, FUSE mount with kplr, zram, Librewolf config, Kitty config, lives in configuration.nix so that rebuilding the Chromebook produces the exact same environment as the laptop.

The Background program

A systemd service watches ~/Downloads and ~/Videos and other directories for changes. Files older than 10 days or larger than 100MB get sharded to kplr automatically and replaced with stubs locally.

What I'm Actually Asking

  1. FUSE caching: How do you make a FUSE filesystem feel like a local drive? Right now the first open of any file has noticeable latency because it's fetching from cloud backends. I want the second open to be instant. Is there a standard pattern for read-ahead caching inside a FUSE implementation
  2. Sway + Kitty session save: Has anyone written a script that captures a Sway workspace layout and Kitty window state at the same time, so a single command on the second device restores everything, apps in position, terminal splits and all?
  3. eMMC performance on NixOS: 64GB eMMC has genuinely terrible random write performance. Are there mount options (noatime, relatime, specific schedulers) that help? I've also seen people move the Nix store build directories to a tmpfs RAM disk so rebuilds don't thrash the eMMC, has anyone actually done this and is it worth the complexity?
  4. FUSE as a sync layer instead of Syncthing: Is anyone using a custom FUSE mount as their primary cross-device file access layer instead of something like Syncthing? My main concern is manifest consistency, what happens if both devices write to the same path at the same time before either has synced? How do you handle conflict resolution cleanly?

RAM survival tactics I'm already planning (thoughts welcome)

  • zram swap at 50% RAM, zstd compression
  • LibreWolf dom.ipc.processCount capped at 4 (down from default 8)
  • MOZ_ENABLE_WAYLAND=1 to skip XWayland overhead
  • Tab unloading via about:unloads triggered by memory pressure, not a timer
  • NixOS build limits: max-jobs = 1, cores = 2, MemoryMax = 3G on nix-daemon, without this nixos-rebuild takes the whole machine down with it

Happy to share more about kplr once it's in a shareable state. Mostly just want to know if questions 1–4 have obvious answers I'm missing.

reddit.com
u/nigh-knight — 13 days ago
▲ 20 r/Skeuomorphism

Thoughts on my logo progression for my music app? From oldest to current

I'm developing a music app that will allow users to be able to make blends with artists, think: the OnlyFans of music with artists instead of models and music blends instead of pictures.

It goes from first design made to current design, that is oldest to newest and current.

What do you think about the progression and the current design, the last, i was majorly inspired by Frutiger Aero and Skeuomorphism and overall Y2k aesthetics, hence the bubbly logos, but also Skeuomorphism.

It also goes from first logo, the simple one to current logo, the one that has that Skeuomorphic style.

I posted this logo to some other subreddits and it was not pretty, people did not like the y2k skeuomorphism vibe, probably because they're used to more clean modern looks, that oppose the look of an image popping out the screen

I do want to know though are these logos that i made legit? like are clean and nice looking or should i still work on them some more?

Please excuse the quality of the last image, it looks better against the metal texture i made for it on the last image

u/nigh-knight — 16 days ago
▲ 42 r/FrutigerAero

Thoughts on my logo progression for my music app? I evoked the Frutiger Aero spirits!!

I'm developing a music app that will allow users to be able to make blends with artists, think the OnlyFans of music with artists instead of models and music blends instead of pictures.

It goes from first design made to current design.

What do you think about the progression and the current design, i was majorly inspired by Frutiger Aero and the Y2k aesthetic, hence the bubbly logos on the last logo.

It also goes from first logo to current logo.

I posted this logo to some other subreddits and it was not pretty, people did not like the y2k vibe, probably because they're used to more clean modern looks, that oppose the Frutiger Aero vibes

I do want to know though are these logos that i made legit? like are clean and nice looking or should i still work on them some more?

u/nigh-knight — 16 days ago
▲ 5 r/Logo_Design_Critique

What do you think about my logo progression for my music app?

I'm developing a music app that will allow users to be able to make blends with artists, think the OnlyFans of music with artists instead of models and music blends instead of pictures.

It goes from first design made to current design.

What do you think about the progression and the current design?

u/nigh-knight — 16 days ago
▲ 0 r/UI_Design

What are your thoughts on my future site background?

I combined an inorganic gunmetal texture with a seemingly organic texture, Fruitiger Aero texture.

​

I want my site to be a sort of collage of various aesthetics:

- skeuomorphism

- frutiger aero

- neo brutalism

​

I don't know if I'm going in the right direction by combining this gun metal panel with an organic frutiger aero wallpaper.

​

What are your thoughts?

u/nigh-knight — 19 days ago