Yup, no way I'm enabling play services and installing Messages just to use RCS. I mostly use Signal, anyway.

What we should really be fighting for is more federation between messaging platforms.

It will probably have an SD card slot like the FP5.

Now if only I could get a meaningful reply to a bug preventing complete account deletion, either on github or from support. It seems they modeled their support structure on Google's.

I was pleasantly surprised with Evolution the last time I tried to use Gnome, it used to be a buggy, bloated mess. But alas, I can't manage to use Gnome for more than a release or two. Now I'm looking for a decent Wayland native alternative to Thunderbird, but it just doesn't exist without DE bloat at this point. Maybe someone will build a modern replacement for Sylpheed/Claws.

Ok, so the resolv.conf is being used to put systemd-resolved in the forwarding path, with it listening on 127.0.0.53. That's how Mint does things, so don't touch that file.

Your resolved.conf has no DNS servers or fallback DNS servers configured, so it should just use the DNS servers handed out by DHCP. Either your DHCP servers isn't handing out a DNS server (unlikely, since other machines work), NetworkManager was configured to not use DHCP DNS servers, or you're hitting some bug causing the same. I suspect you may have configured NetworkManager for this, maybe it was overriding the VPN DNS. Or maybe you accidentally set the NetworkManager DNS backend to dnsmasq, when it should be systemd-resolved in Mint.

You could try uncommenting that FallbackDNS line and adding a couple space separated DNS servers, maybe your router IP. Mine looks like this:

#DNS= FallbackDNS=1.1.1.1 1.0.0.1 #Domains=

That will hopefully allow VPN DNS to work when it's connected, and fall back to other DNS servers when not. If not, we could try taking a look at NetworkManager configs. It's been a bit, I use systemd-networkd now, but I could spin up a VM.

I think they care about their customers just about as much as they care about making money, and aside from GOG, the competition simply does not. It's a pretty good demonstration to how capitalism has failed us, to be honest, because any of those competitors would have been able to compete if they hadn't treated their customers like shit.

If you wanted to, you could post your /etc/resolv.conf and /etc/systemd/resolved.conf here. I don't know if there might be a configuration directory option for systemd-resolved, so keep an eye out for a potential directory like /etc/systemd/resolved.d that might have the configs instead.

Uhm... interesting hyperbole during a time where America is literally facing down a fascist dictator.

Did you ever come back to this and figure it out? My curiosity is killing me :)

Oh, he absolutely will be. I hope to be there when we string them up on the capitol steps.

Let's be perfectly honest, both parties have been selling us out to increasingly centralized corporations, who shipped our jobs overseas, peddled us ever shittier products, and killed off our local cultures and economies in favor of Walmart, Kroger, and Amazon.

But these are fascists now, and I can't think of anything my inner anarchist hates more than fascists. But we should probably stop calling them nazis, they're certainly supported by nazis, kkk, and others. But this is MAGA America, make no mistake. We need to wait for them to hurt enough people for the sentiment to turn against them, and then take it back at all costs.

It's not too late. Only a matter of time before we normalize putting bullets in nazi brains, once again.

And I think it's probably not in resolv.conf, that's a stub that kind of redirects things to systemd-resolved. So I think it's in the forwarder config of that.

Be careful, I was just looking over the Arch docs I linked you to, and I think the configs have changed substantially in the last few months. There's a good chance that the configs in Mint look substantially different.

Agreed, though I don't think they disabled systemd-resolved, because it still works using 127.0.0.53 when they're connected to the VPN. So the daemon must be running, unless Mullvad itself has a DNS forwarder using the same loopback. I suspect they either hard coded some upstream DNS server for Mullvad, because Mullvad might not have supported systemd-resolved yet. Or maybe they set a permission on the configs, and something changed with the user context of Mullvad processes.

Interesting that it works when the VPN is connected, though. I also believe that systemd-resolved is installed on just about any system using systemd, but often isn't enabled, without problem. Enabling it would generally involve a resolv.conf symlink and a config, so maybe that config was hijacked by Mullvad (or OP configuring Mullvad), and there's no upstream DNS server available when the VPN isn't connected.

I missed that it's Linux Mint in the original post, and it looks like Mint has started using systemd-resolved. The Arch wiki might be useful to OP on how things are configured:

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Systemd-resolved

Ok, so something setup 127.0.0.53 as your DNS server, and isn't removing it correctly. I think it's safe to say it's Mullvad, since it works using that DNS server IP when connected. Is that IP in your resolv.conf, or is resolv.conf maybe a stub, and you're using systemd-resolved?

Ok, so does the VPN bring it's own DNS? Some VPNs do, so it may explain why everything suddenly works fine when you connect.

When not connected to VPN, are you able to dig or nslookup internet names? Local names? A server timeout will be very different from an nxdomain or an empty SOA, in the response.

Are you able to telnet to a public web server on TCP/443?

One thought I'm having is, maybe at some point you set a static IP on your wifi interface, but screwed up the subnetting.

Have you ever messed with network manager or systemd-resolved internal settings, maybe trying to setup multicast DNS or caching?

Honestly, I never really use it untethered enough to give you a good answer. But I can say that notebookcheck's battery tests are pretty good, and they test enough laptops to compare well across a large number of models and generations.

I'd say if you get a Ryzen, yeah. I have a P14s gen4 AMD that I use for my primary machine, and game on successfully. But I also have an old T14s gen1 AMD that work let me keep when I got refreshed. Right now I have Windows on it, to play some games that don't work well in Proton, but it works fine in Linux as well.

If you can swing it, the T14s gen3 with a Ryzen 7 6850u was a truly excellent machine, it's what I have for work right now. But we won't see it coming off lease for another couple years, so it's a bit early for good prices on the used market.

Just grab a 3-4 year old 13" business class laptop, like a Thinkpad X13. When they come off lease at 3-4 years, they hit the used market at pretty great prices. Some are in rough shape, but use trusted sellers who sell at reasonable volume, and their condition grading tends to be pretty reliable.

Be careful about upgradable RAM, or getting at least 16GB. It sounds like you'd be fine with 8GB for now, but 16GB will get you better life out of the machine.

You may want to replace the SSD straight away, depending on the write cycles. I'd probably just grab one with 256GB, and get a replacement straight away. Lenovo has all their hardware maintenance manuals online, to make checking compatibility and performing the upgrade pretty easy.

Hopefully they plan to stabilize what they see as core functionality, and then build out features. Some people won't consider it ready until this or that feature is added, but many of us who just want a WM+ can start using it once it's relatively stable.