Canadians steer clear of US as travel from north falls for seventh month
Numbers of return road and air trips continue to fall after trade policy row and threats to annex country
Archived version: archive.is/20250812215254/theg…
Disclaimer: The article linked is from a single source with a single perspective. Make sure to cross-check information against multiple sources to get a comprehensive view on the situation.
Air Canada says it will begin cancelling flights ahead of possible weekend strike
CUPE gave airline 72-hour strike notice after 2 sides reached 'impasse' in talks
Lithuania to give children drone training to counter Russia threat
Government aims to teach 22,000 people, including children as young as eight, how to build and operate drones
Archived version: archive.is/20250813141132/theg…
Disclaimer: The article linked is from a single source with a single perspective. Make sure to cross-check information against multiple sources to get a comprehensive view on the situation.
Switzerland expands sanctions against Russian oil exports, aligning with EU
Switzerland extended its sanctions lists to align with the EU's 18th package against Russia, specifically targeting Moscow's largest budget revenue source – oil exports, the Swiss government said.
Archived version: archive.is/newest/kyivindepend…
Disclaimer: The article linked is from a single source with a single perspective. Make sure to cross-check information against multiple sources to get a comprehensive view on the situation.
Canada’s cannabis industry contributes more than $76 billion to Canada’s GDP, generates nearly 100,000 jobs annually
The cannabis industry contributed $76.5 billion to Canada’s gross domestic product (GDP) and $23.1 billion to Ontario’s GDP between legalization in 2018 and 2024, according to a new report from the Ontario Cannabis Store (OCS) and Deloitte.
Archived version: archive.is/newest/stratcann.co…
Disclaimer: The article linked is from a single source with a single perspective. Make sure to cross-check information against multiple sources to get a comprehensive view on the situation.
adhocfungus likes this.
Can't we do anything as google is killing AOSP and custom ROMS
It feel like we’re losing to Google, day by day. They aren’t killing AOSP directly, but they are making it useless step by step.
Now it’s Google Play Services, Play Integrity checks, installation source checks… more and more apps just refuse to run without GMS. Banking apps? Most of them don’t work. And it’s only getting worse.
I run vanilla AOSP on my main profile, no Play Services. I keep GMS only in my work profile for the apps that absolutely need it. But now even some regular apps that don't need any play services won’t work on my main profile anymore. They simply block your from running , like le chat.
Maps is google's most important app there is no way to run without play services. Sure we can use webview or gmaps wv, but they don't provide turn-by-turn directions.
Earlier maps used to work without play services, but two years ago, an update stopped it from working. Now that old version is out of date and no longer works.
Google is slowly making GMS very important to run.
The problem with GMS is they require to run as system app and has to have all the permissions by default.
Hope EU puts pressure to make google allow apps to run independently without GMS or atleast install them as user apps(like graphene os sandboxed play services).
If we keep going on like this, AOSP can only run fdroid apps in the future.
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Rozaŭtuno e adhocfungus like this.
tHeSe qUeStIoNs
It was one question, and it's a relevant one. If you are worried about Google cutting support for Google Maps on AOSP, the solution is not to double down on the Google ecosystem. There's not going to be some magical perfect replacement for Google Maps out of nowhere, the only way its competitors improve is if people use them.
If you don't want to, that's fine, just don't start crying when Google pulls support out from under you.
There's many navigation apps that have traffic, like Magic Earth which 100% runs without GMS.
For review you can use gmaps wv or TripAdvisor.
Here We Go has traffic and TripAdvisor integration, but I'm not sure whether it runs without GMS.
I can't speak to any other countries, but in the states, Magic Earth has been great for me. Been using it for over two years now, several different regions of the USA. It's not as good as Google Maps, but it's plenty good enough for my needs.
Navigation and routing is solid, traffic data is acceptable, and the dashcam feature is awesome.
It's easier and nicer. But it's also shitty because of what you mentioned.
The thing is, that's how it's going to stay unless people stop using it. You can get this info you mentioned somewhere else, or simply don't need it, as I said, yes it's harder and less nice to live without it, but it's not like you can't live without live traffic data or whatever. Start using CoMaps, contribute to open street map, leave reviews on other review aggregators, etc etc
What is a good alternative that actually does navigation and searches on places as well as gmaps? I've been using OsmAnd and it's absolutely dogshit compared to it. Even the navigation, the arguably most important part, is pretty bad.
Edit: actually spent some time looking again, and CoMaps does this quite well. This is replacing OsmAnd+ for me.
comaps
The main code repository of CoMaps, a community-led fork of Organic Maps. Reinforced with commitment to transparency, privacy and being not-for-profit.Codeberg.org
if you don’t know the specific address of a place you’re pretty much SOoL
Look the address up and put it into the map app...problem solved.
I'm not expecting perfect matches, but what is considered basic proper functionality. Expecting a navigation app that is not just on par (or even worse) with a 25 year old TomTom is really not setting the bar high or expecting too much IMO.
And I do still use inferior apps to avoid big tech, but the constant shortcomings (some minor, some major) is extremely annoying, so yeah I'm venting some of that.
Co maps is mostly garbage for places. Is missing my Wegmans for fucks sake 🤣
Just a heads up for your continued testing.
CoMaps uses OpenStreetMap data, which is populated by the public, so you can fix your problem easily yourself by submitting the data you need that's missing.
You can do this right from inside CoMaps, but also StreetComplete is another great app option for doing so.
I've done this for missing stuff in my area, my edits got verified and accepted very quickly. It's much nicer than waiting for Google to maybe update their shit when it's wrong.
rooting your phone gives you ability to fake a lot of the requirements to make stubborn apps run.
Rooting also completely breaks the ability to run some apps with no recourse for spoofing the fact that it's a rooted device.
[GUIDE] 🛡️ How to Pass Strong Integrity on Android (Step-by-Step Guide)
This tutorial will help you successfully pass Basic, Device, and Strong Integrity checks in both Legacy and New Play Integrity responses. Make sure to follow each step carefully. 🔧 Step 1...Rajarshi Khatua (XDA Forums)
Banking is easily accessible thru a web browser
Until your bank 2nd factor requires google play services and all the banks in your country have the same requirement.
Yeah, that's my case as well with my main bank. So I have a separate phone that remains off until I need it (and some other crappy apps for electricity, customs and other stuff). Otherwise I'm still rocking my trusty Pixel 8 Pro running on GrapheneOS from day 1. Now, it is highly likely that, from Pixel 10 and in GrapheneOS won't be able to keep developing (I certainly hope I'm wrong), so I'm thinking on switching my 8 Pro for a 9Pro XL and keep it until GrapheneOS lands and agreement with an OEM to launch their own devices.
I guess all we can do is wait and see what happens in a month or so.
I am with you on this!
Need to buy a VPN? check F-Droid first. Need any other utility? check F-Droid first, I am ready to suck up a lot of inconvenience with the apps that aren't polished (Most of the time they are superior). Feeling generous? donate and help make the world a better place.
I sucked up a lot of inconvenience using Linux for last 2 decades or so, so I am well prepared.
LINux on MOBile
LINMOB.net is a blog about LINux on MOBile devices. With the PinePhone (Pro) and Librem 5 shipping it is back to report on GNU+Linux on mobile devices.LINux on MOBile
It'll be awhile. They've been in a development state since the launch of the original pinephone in 2020. And even the pinephone is going to be unavailable in two years as pine64 is ceasing sales on it. Not trying to crap on devs. I bought two pinephones (Braveheart & Mobian bundle). Tested multiple distros and excitedly followed their progress for years. I never had a reliable working phone in that four year span. IMO SailfishOS and Post Market OS are the two most usable mobile distros. SailfishOS now requires an ongoing subscription to use which I don't like.
liliputing.com/pinephone-pro-l…
PinePhone Pro Linux smartphone has been discontinued, but the original PinePhone is still available - Liliputing
PinePhone Pro Linux smartphone has been discontinued, but the original PinePhone is still availableBrad Linder (Liliputing)
Sailfish only needs a subscription to get updates, you can use it without a sub.
I use danctnix on my pinephone, which is basically arch. It does the basics, that's about it. What's missing is more convenient apps. Most of the stuff is catered to desktop.
Of all the OSes I tried, I liked ubports the best, but it was not updated and not all hardware worked iirc, and suffered the same problem of apps. At least arch gets updated constantly.
Linux based phones have been in development for more than a decade now. I had a Neo Freerunner from OpenMoko in 2008… it kinda worked, but it was not good enough for a daily driver.
What we have now is much better, but there’s still some ways to go before I'm able to ditch my non-linuxy smartphone.
the problem is that google is capable of slurping all of your data and your phone becomes an enhanced avenue for access; the linux phones are the solution to this.
i'm convinced that the "it just works" mantra is the reason why google or apple or microsoft is able to do this sort of asshattery and i can understand why people would want something that simply works.
however, the trade off for this mantra is that you're giving yourself over to a corporation that not only doesn' t have your best interest at heart but has proven will happily sell your control for a penny.
i can also understand why someone wouldn't think that any of this matters and; if you're lucky; it won't matter all, but for the rest of us unlucky sob's (and the people who don't want to put their faith in luck), linux phones matter.
They're actively trying to solve:
- e-waste and making devices last longer (contributing upstream)
- escaping data harvesting and surveillance
- offer an alternative to the mobile duopoly
I'm baffled that they even bother, given how much people complain about it not being good enough. But I'm glad they do, and I think it's awesome.
They're not a multi-billion dollar company. If you don't like it, then don't use it. That's your choice.
But please stop talking nonsense about them not addressing real problems. Because they are. And they deserve credit for that. Not whining about the imperfections of a work in progress.
Who wants to run scaled down desktop apps on their phone
I believe the UI of most apps could be made to work well with phone display sizes and resolutions.
and who wants a terminal on a phone either?
Well, I do! It's great when you want to connect, do or automate something there isn't an app for. For now I sometimes run Termux on Android. Among smartphone users in general I'm probably an edge case, but among Linux users, I must say, using a terminal on the phone doesn't seem that crazy to me.
What stops anyone from making new GUIs, maybe even a new framework for doing that, optimised for touchscreens rather than keyboard and mouse?
Maybe I'm just unknowledgeable, but to me that idea doesn't sound very far-fetched.
I have used postmarketOS, and I thought the interface (Plasma Mobile) was OK, but could use some improvements. How long ago did you use it?
Edit: Now that I think about it, I think the last time I tried the Pinephone it was using Manjaro, not postmarketOS. I have used that before though, but you may want to give it another try as it is vastly improved IMO. That being said, the Pinephone itself still kinda sucks from a hardware perspective.
As per my 30min research, GrapheneOS depends heavily on pixel internals, but I will highjack one of the mastodon posts maybe somebody will spoonfeed me the definitive answer.
I live in a very low cost area, hopefully I will manage to get a nameless phone to run GrapheneOS or LineageOS at low cost, forward most of the income to the open source projects.
It might be too naive but I am giving it a shot.
Thank you! GrapheneOS isn't an option then, I will wait for their phone.
I guess I could still shoot my shot with LineageOS.
If you wanted to talk to the Graphene folks the best spot seems to be their matrix rooms rather than masto.
matrix.to/#/#general:grapheneo…
Matrix - Decentralised and secure communication
You're invited to talk on Matrix. If you don't already have a client this link will help you pick one, and join the conversation. If you already have one, this link will help you join the conversationmatrix.to
The GrapheneOs team is quite particular about hardware.
I would gladly purchase a phone that came preloaded with LineageOS.
"Better than we have now." often wins over waiting for perfection.
I only use Lineage and have done so for years without any problems since CyanogenMod 10.1.
Do remember that it is the choice of the developers to use google services and nothing to do with google.
When you say "Le Chat", do you mean Mistral AI assistant/chatbot? Its probably stopped working since GPT‑5.
Currently it is not possible to run "Le Chat" ai on a phone without google,
Again its the devopers choice. They could develop a non-google Le Chat.
who on earth needs a chatbot on a phone?
I have never have any problems finding open source alternative apps.
MAPS: Comaps, Organic Maps and MagicEarth, all provide Turn by Turn navigation
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turn-by-…
I dont use any Banking Apps. Why do you need a banking app? I login to my bank in the comfort and safety of my home.
Lineage:
If you must use google try E/OS. It Uses MicroG and works very well.
microG is a FLOSS implementation of Google play services
With a web browser and user agent spoofing, that's basically how it works. I don't want any Facebook/Meta apps on my phone, so I use a desktop Google Chrome rule for all Meta URLs in my browser and user the web versions. Mobile is slowly taking over, but most things have a web version.
Unfortunately, that doesn't work for everything. The Quest 3 requires an Android or iOS device to set up. At least an old cell phone on a throwaway Google account works for most of these, since they don't need to be used often.
Hike, Bike, Drive Offline Navigate with Privacy
Discover more of your journey -www.comaps.app
Powered by the community
CoMaps is quite nice.
There are also still companies selling navigation devices that mount in a car windshield, assuming the car doesn't already have one built in.
Pro tip - those navigation devices also often have an accident camera that records if it feels an impact - which is a good idea anyway.
Wow, supports Android Auto too!
Edit: Says it supports Android Auto, to be clear - not tested by me, and issue(s) reported below.
I was using it in a restricted profile with only proprietary apps (like banking apps).
Comaps is a fork of organic maps so it should work too.
I'm not sure what the point of the post is? Is it to share frustration? Searching for a solution? Sorry, I may be not good at inferring this, but I don't get it.
IF you are in solution-finding mode, then there are a few things that you can do.
- You can use those banks that work without google. I've found 2 in the Netherlands, for example. One of them stopped working a while ago, I've wrote about that to their support and had to discontinue, withdrawing all my funds using a Dutch procedure for full withdrawal from a bank. After half a year or so I've noticed they've fixed it and work without google again. I've returned as well (it's convenient for me to have 2 banks). I'm sure as hell banks watch for their usage statistics and wouldn't like seeing people leave their bank if it can be fixed with a simple reversal of whatever the dev team did lately.
- You could try Linux phones such as PinePhone to see which use cases can it already cover. 30%? 70%? 90%? You'll know what to even wait for in the Linux landscape to be able to switch. You'll get a bit of power or mental control if you acquire this knowledge.
- Funnily, you can expect some good news coming from all those fights between US and China, because that makes a LOT of devices ship without google services. And some people in your county (I assume it's not China, otherwise you wouldn't have these problems) may have phones bought there, so you won't be alone when pushing for such changes.
Dutch banks working without google are: BUNQ and ASN Bank (EDIT: and Triodos).
BUNQ has the built-in QR scanning functionality broken (the one for iDEAL, if you're living in NL you know), but that's acceptable because it works to scan the QR in Binary Eye, which in turn opens the bunq app and the payment can be made easily.
ASN just works, all features that I've tried I think. (This one is only in Dutch though.)
Banks that I've tried few years ago and they didn't work: ING, ABN AMRO, Rabonbank, Tridos, possibly few others that I forgot.
Also, lately I've started using some of those "international" ones, not so focused on NL. I've found that Wise (pure web, haven't even tried their app) and Revolut (app) seem to work well on my de-googlified phone. Hope that helps!
EDIT: re-worded the first line of my message to be indexable by search engines, because that may be useful for future readers.
Thanks for the useful feedback.
Wise requires me to use the app as 2FA in order to log into their web interface. How do you log in without the app?
You can use andOTP if you want a FOSS app on Android. If you're a hardcore no-Android-at-all user (or considering), you can use KeePassXC on the desktop. This kind of defeats the purpose of 2FA, but on the other hand people with KeePassXC tend to have strong passwords due to ease of their maintenance, so you don't need 2FA as much to begin with.
TL&DR; use andOTP on Android or KeePassXC on Linux Desktop.
What puzzled me was that I had no option to input a TOTP. The website would only send me a notification through the Wise app to allow the login.
I have just discovered that the waiting screen on the website had a small, clickable text 'Did not receive a notification?' that leads to other options, including TOTP. That's so much better!
Thank you, I would never have discovered this if you had not said that this was possible.
And shoutout to @vas for actually telling banks and presumably other institutions that they need to be platform neutral or lose their custom. That's my preferred way out of this mess. Goog luck ungoogling, everyone
Hope EU puts pressure to make google allow apps to run independently without GMS or atleast install them as user apps(like graphene os sandboxed play services).
I doubt they will put any pressure. EU decided to rely on GMS for their upcoming Digital ID app. While they claim they want to switch to open source alternatives of big tech services, they designed their app so that it forces EU citizens to either comply with Google's ToS, or Apple's.
Related discussion:
github.com/eu-digital-identity…
Do not add Google Play Integrity integration
In the README, the following is listed: App and device verification based on Google Play Integrity API and Apple App Attestation I would like to strongly urge to abandon this plan. Requiring a depe...TheLastProject (GitHub)
Well spotted, my bad!
The link the new discussion is here: github.com/eu-digital-identity…
Do not add Google Play Integrity integration · eu-digital-identity-wallet av-doc-technical-specification · Discussion #19
In the README, the following is listed: App and device verification based on Google Play Integrity API and Apple App Attestation I would like to strongly urge to abandon this plan. Requiring a depe...GitHub
Damn we are stupid in the EU!
What do we want: digital sovereignty
When do we want it: ehrm.. Well.. We have some things in pipeline and it is really hard...
They know that NSA is directly spying on us and they don't care
Keep in mind GMS does not need to run as a system app. On GrapheneOS it does not.
At least for me only about 15% of my apps need GMS and I only run GMS in my private space which most of the time I lock.
So yes I do not like needing GMS but it is not so doom and gloom.
Does what work? If you mean GMS sandboxing, that is ROM specific. Up to what the ROM supplier does.
Why would one need another ROM. GrapheneOS is one of the best. So is Google hardware in terms of lifetime cost, capability, and security. What other supplier gives 7 year support?
Generally with android it is best to choose the ROM and then the best hardware for it anyway. The best ROMs often have limited hardware support. There are not that many reasonable ROMs anyway. Nor are there many hardware choices that aupport most ROMs fully.
Yeah, this is a problem. I attempted to switch to GrapheneOS just a month ago and had to roll back to stock Android. One of my banking apps worked, but 3 others didn't. My 2FA app didn't work. I stopped receiving important texts as they were previously RCS and that refused to validate no matter what I did.
Google has made it extremely hard to degoogle.
There is always a trade-off with privacy and security. It's totally okay to decide you prefer convenience over privacy.
If you wanted to give it another shot:
- You could use a different 2FA app - I know Bitwarden works well
- You can use a soft phone SMS, bonus that you can send and receive from a computer
That was why I wanted to move to GrapheneOS, I could selectively use Google services or apps for convenience while still being more secure than stock Android. I'll have to plan my next attempt out instead of Yolo and adapt, lol.
I do plan to migrate to a new 2FA, but Authy made that hard by getting rid of their desktop app so you can't port and have to go to each service and manually sign up a new app one by one. I tend to boycott services when they get that anticonsumer/anticompetitive out of principle.
My work 2FA is physical token based, it is my personal 2FA that causing me problems. Email and text authentication is insecure enough that I try and use a software authenticator whenever possible.
Great point about the work phone. I don't want a work phone as I don't have any desire to be reachable 24/7 outside of the rotating week I'm on call, but if I was expected to have email and Teams and everything on my phone I would definitely require one. Thankfully my work texts are all for team updates, heads up about issues, scheduling matters, etc, but I still consider those to be important while not riding to a separate work phone
Convenience and security probably.
The website version of a lot of banks require you login (each time) with a customer numer and then random letters from your password and or pin, which takes forever so I never bother unless I need the website.
Im (more) paranoid whenever I use a sensitive website. Quadruple checking the domain name, am i on https (even tho i use no-http and have a password manager). It's a bit more relaxing using an app.
Theres probably some security downsides (other than user error), but a modern banking site shouldn't suffer much since they invest heavily in locking down their shtuff.
Google has made it extremely hard to degoogle.
Just remember that there are no nice reasons why they are working this hard to keep your phone captive.
We can argue about how bad it will get, but there's only worse things coming from this effort.
Oh, totally, which is why I am working towards as much decoupling as possible. I plan to replace my Nest gear with Ubiquity for cameras and stuff as I can afford it, and eventually set up my own offline automation server. This can only end badly for consumers.
The collusion between services like Authy and Google indicates this to me, but it's also effective and means I have to pivot in slower degrees. I am encountering similar issues moving to Linux from Windows, so this is a full Silicone Valley issue.
With respect to 2FA, if you want to be more ready for any future next time, you could migrate to an open-source TOTP app. E.g. andOTP. I use this one, it's fine. The underlying standards don't change in decades, so you can choose any compatible client and be without trouble for years and years. And it may be good to do in any case, googlified phone or not. Good apps also tend to provide password-protected backups.
I have no knowledge about RCS though, never used it so can't tell. Otherwise GrapheneOS user for ~2 years, before that LineageOS, before that CopperheadOS for another few years.
One of my banking apps worked, but 3 others didn't.
Same issue, I just did web browser instead
My 2FA app didn't work.
I suggest just exporting and using a different 2FA app, especially an open source one like Aegis
I stopped receiving important texts as they were previously RCS and that refused to validate no matter what
RCS on GrapheneOS is very finicky and requires using AppOps to enable READ_DEVICE_IDENTIFIERS, and you have to let carrier services and google messages have more permissions to work. You also might have to deregister your previous phone to use the number (i.e. my old iPhone still had my number in the settings, had to remove it). There's a very long GrapheneOS thread about it, but the link should be the solution.
I suggest just exporting and using a different 2FA app, especially an open source one like Aegis
Authy dropped their desktop app and killed the ability to export. I will have to start from scratch, but I definitely plan to.
I spent a week with that discussion your linked plus several other posts, I just couldn't get it working. I might have better luck next time I try it though.
Yeah, I got fucked by Authy too and did it the hard way last year.
The RCS forum post was very tedious and I came back a few months later cause RCS broke, but it's been good for almost a year now so I think I got it. Some extra details to note are your carrier, deregistring old phones, verifying app permissions, and just waiting a week or so.
I totally understand your frustration though, as I went through it 😅
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sunzu2 likes this.
GMS apps work fine. The only ones that don't work are ones that act invasively enough to notice they are sandboxed and disable themselves.
Mostly bank apps. Which is irritating, since they all have mobile friendly websites that work fine without needing to know my location and everything else about my phone.
That's a pretty good description of what GrapheneOS does with the sandboxed Google services.
I have found that the only apps that don't work well with Samdboxed Google services are ones that work hard to invasively probe their runtime environment.
Thwy usually fall into these three categories:
- Bank apps that do it "for my safety". Nevermind that a website version exists for attackers to target without the same (dubious, invasive) "protections".
- Streaming apps that do it "because this paid subscriber might be some kind of dark web pirate and we need to protect our content from being uploaded to the dark web one more time."
- Apps whose developers are shitty at writing code for memory management. But GrapheneOS has good options to allow these to run, anyway.
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☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆ likes this.
EU won't be too friendly either given the nature of their recent identification app. You should still write to your legislators, but they're a mostly tech-illiterate bunch, so expect it to be a low ROI activity.
Really do consider donating to projects like GrapheneOS. The GrapheneOS team are a very passionate and clever group, and I'd like to think that they can at least give us something to work with, even if Google completely cuts the cord. Hopefully they can also secure an additional revenue stream once they release their own phone.
If it really does all fall through and there's no deGoogled way to run Android apps, I'll keep a separate phone, preferably with a removable battery, with regular Android just to host the proprietary apps. Treat it as a work phone, i.e. power off when not needed, don't connect to my main home network, don't do anything that doesn't need to be done on it. Proprietary apps only make up a small fraction of my mobile workflow, so everything else stays on another phone that respects my privacy.
they're a mostly tech-illiterate bunch
Y'all keep saying this.... These people are not stupid, they are corrupt. Start calling spade a spade. You are giving them something to hide behind jfc.
It is only slightly on topic, but I'd like to give a hateful shout out to Ticketmaster/Live Nation's new "mobile only" ticketed events that require you to have an iPhone or fully Google blessed Android phone. They do not allow you to use a QR code or printed ticket anymore, only their app with a constantly changing bare code or Google wallet (unsure of the IOS experience).
I am going to a concert this weekend and I either have to dig up some old phone that can work with this app or sell my tickets.
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HeerlijkeDrop likes this.
Someone recently crack their shit code. Can use offline app after extract secret once. Will link once find.
Edit: conduition.io/coding/ticketmas… app (javascript) github.com/conduition/ticketgi…
Reverse Engineering TicketMaster's Rotating Barcodes (SafeTix)
"Screenshots won't get you in", but Chrome DevTools will.Conduition
How do I use Mobile Entry tickets?
When your event is Mobile only, or you selected Mobile Entry at checkout, you’ll only be able to access your tickets on your phone. Tickets can’t be printed from your account or get emailed to you....Ticketmaster Help
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sunzu2 likes this.
I've been quietly boycotting them for over 13 years now, shortly after online scalpers started having their field day with their sites. It sucks not being able to go to any major shows but I have made myself compromise by going to small local shows only and it hasn't been that bad.
Everyone votes with their wallets, so as long as people keep paying, they'll keep making us jump through more and more hoops.
Of the largest android sellers, only samsung requires gplay. Xiaomi, vivo, oppo, realme, honor, are all chinese companies that require non-bundled google play for their domestic (and maybe other countries?) releases. Google can't alienate these sellers, and if they did, all of these companies would create their own AOSP fork (or just switch to HarmonyOS)
I recently bought a xiaomi android tablet that doesn't have google play services luckily.
Android phone manufacturer market share (Aug 2025)
The most up-to-date data about the phone manufacturersAppBrain
If the goal is too swap one parasite for another, this is a valid strategy BUT
Custom ROM is the only proper solution, ideally GrapheneOS, if you actually care about security and privacy.
I use Shelter to enable the work profile. It permits to copy apps between standard and work profile. So it is possible to have google services (with an account set I mean) in the work profile.
Apps like for Banks can't be copied though. But most of the others can.
Shelter | F-Droid - Free and Open Source Android App Repository
Isolate and run multiple instances of apps using Work Profilesf-droid.org
Maps?
Use OsmAnd and MagicEarth?
I've been doping it for years now. Works fine.
Run as many open source apps as you can is about the best option. Also, OSMAND does provide turn-by-turn directions.
What it does not do well is street addresses, so at times you may find that you have to use the GPS coordinates of the place you are going to in order to get directions.
It's never had any trouble with street addresses for me. It's using open street map so if there are addresses that aren't right you can submit changes.
Where it has trouble for me is on long trips over great distances. If you ask it to route a 6-hour trip to another state through a couple of metropolitan areas It has a pretty good chance of sending you a non-optimal route.
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The normie is the battle ground.
They need better info and they need to be hurt by corpos for change to heppen.
Uk age verification should see a bump in freedom enjoyer ranks
Normie is not an insult or derogatory. It just means "normal person", who is usually not very tech savy.
Most Normies don't care about privacy. They know, accept and are ok with their data being collected and sold in "free" services.
It's different for every one, but for me it would mean, I can't use Microsoft authenticator, so I can't do my job anymore, as it is required to access my mail, teams, files, logging worked hours, etc etc.
I can't use any of my bank apps anymore, I can't use my phone anymore for paying in a store or checking in public transportation.
And many more apps that would stop working.
Tell your employer to provide you a corpo phone.
You shouldn't be using personal device for anything related to your job imho
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You have accurately identified a major part of the problem. Many people are unwilling to change their habits, or don't have the patience to learn new tools.
The other element though is time, many people don't have the time to stop and learn. Especially when a problem like privacy is a lot less immediate than hunger or healthcare.
If they really had interest in stopping you they could definitely stop you. That's the direction they're heading with all of these apps that are doing the integrity check. It's just a matter of time that it'll take for them to do it gradually enough not to make everything backward compatible explode.
Microg and stuff like that are probably on their way out within the next few generations.
When postmarket finally manages to reverse engineer the modems and the voice and support something with a half decent camera I'll readily leave the ecosystem.
ITT: no one has any idea.
hint: class war
Mainline linux on mobile is solving this problem as we speak: postmarketos.org/
I expect a full collapse of the Google Android behemoth about the same time we get Half Life 3.
postmarketOS // real Linux distribution for phones
Aiming for a 10 year life-cycle for smartphonespostmarketOS
Realistically, change your approach to how you use your phone.
A majority of apps are not actually apps. They are a web app packaged in an apk so they can get elevated permissions and more data. Dont download apps, instead just install them from your browser as the web app they are. This is far more secure and far less invasive as generally a web app is containerized, at least thats my understanding in regards to firefox.
Instead of google maps, explore the world of open source navigation apps. Osmand has worked great for me, and tends to provide better info so im not panic merging at the last second. Theres a lot of them out there, and google maps has stagnated for so long that many of them are caught up in features. While its not open source, ive sesn a lot of people praise Magic Earth as well.
Buy phones on the premise of being allowed to use a custom rom. As much as i dont want a pixel because it is google, graphene os is battle tested and much more secure than stock android. But theres also lineage OS, eOS, and a few others out there.
If you need google play services, containerize it. I keep all apps i dont want having special permissions on a work profile. Funnily, i also keep my work apps on that profile, so if google wants my works data then they can handle the lawsuit if something bad happens lol.
I think a lot of people have forgotten that phones are tiny computers. The only real difference is the cell network, but we already have devices that can use those networks that arent phones, so it isnt an exclusive feature to phones. Android can be forked, but also we can emulate android on linux and there are already linux phones out there. If we grow the linux space for phones, then we effectively lose nothing of value while gaining increased freedom. For now, change how you use your phone, and only download apps if you have no other choice.
SemanticWebBrowser - A browser for the semantic web with a controlled natural language as the primary interface
(which is not possible when starting from a ChatGPT-like app); and to capture this new paradigm in a new type of browser that has natural language as its primary interface, here called a semantic web-first browser.
Il colosso d'acciaio rimorchiato nell'Atlantico per mantenere operative le navi di Sua Maestà - Il blog di Jacopo Ranieri
Il colosso d'acciaio rimorchiato nell'Atlantico per mantenere operative le navi di Sua Maestà - Il blog di Jacopo Ranieri
Un migliaio di chilometri d’Oceano dal continente più vicino ed appena 53 totali d’estensione: in un luogo dove si è tentato di sfruttare fino all’ultimo angolo di terra emersa, per non parlare dei preziosi punti d’approdo, può sembrare strano che un…Jacopo (Il blog di Jacopo Ranieri)
Ideas coming down the track
Ideas coming down the track
Transport: New train technologies are less visible and spread less quickly than improvements to cars or planes. But there is still plenty of innovation going on, and ideas are steadily making their way out onto the railsThe Economist
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GitHub - todotxt/todo.txt: ‼️ A complete primer on the whys and hows of todo.txt.
‼️ A complete primer on the whys and hows of todo.txt. - todotxt/todo.txtGitHub
LOL GitHub [2018]
jwz: LOL Github
So MICROS~1 bought Github and everybody's freaking out right now trying to re-host their projects on someone else's service. THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU STORE YOUR DATA IN THE CLOWN.www.jwz.org
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Samsung → iPhone: Need Your De-Google Tips
cross-posted from: sopuli.xyz/post/31024070
Making the jump from Samsung to iPhone soon, mainly for privacy reasons.
Want to cut Google out as much as possible while I'm at it.What I'm planning so far:
- Mailbox.org instead of Gmail
- DuckDuckGo for search, would prefer something even better
- Safari with all the privacy stuff turned on
Where I'm stuck:
- What about YouTube? Just use the web version?
- Google Drive alternatives that actually work well?
- Best way to store photos that aren't big greedy corps?
Questions:
- Any must-have privacy apps once I get the iPhone?
- Settings I should change immediately out of the box?
- Services I'm forgetting that are probably feeding Google my data?
Samsung → iPhone: Need Your De-Google Tips
Note: I prefer Apple over Google and I’m not ready to go full privacy-hardened, I want to find a balance between convenience and privacy protection.So I'm moving from Samsung to iPhone soon, mainly because I despise Google.
Want to cut Google out as much as possible while I'm at it.What I'm planning so far:
- Mailbox.org instead of Gmail
- DuckDuckGo for search, would prefer something even better
- Safari with all the privacy stuff turned on
Where I'm stuck:
- What about YouTube? Just use the web version?
- Google Drive alternatives that actually work well?
- Best way to store photos that aren't big greedy corps?
Questions:
- Any must-have privacy apps once I get the iPhone?
- Settings I should change immediately out of the box?
- Services I'm forgetting that are probably feeding Google my data?
UK police treated to 10 new LFR vans in fresh expansion
A fresh expansion of UK crimefighters' access to live facial recognition (LFR) technology is being described by officials as "an excellent opportunity for policing." Privacy campaigners disagree.
The Home Office said today that more police forces across England will gain LFR capabilities thanks to ten new "cutting edge" vans being wheeled out, adding to those already in use by London's Metropolitan Police and forces in South Wales.
Seven forces will gain access to LFR vans as part of the latest expansion. These are: Greater Manchester, West Yorkshire, Bedfordshire, Surrey and Sussex (jointly), and Thames Valley and Hampshire (jointly).
UK expands police facial recognition rollout with 10 new vans heading to a town near you
: Seven additional regions across England will now have access to the controversial techConnor Jones (The Register)
New De-Google and De-Amazon challenges
Thanks to everyone who participated in the first 5-Week De-Google Challenge on Signal!
I'm about to start another de-Google challenge AND a de-Amazon challenge on Monday.
Here is info on the de-Amazon group. (Signal group and PDF plan)
The de-Google Signal group is here.
And for the de-Google challenge we'll be using this checklist
I hope you'll join (and share) one...or both!.
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You’re right, de-AWS will be difficult but maybe you can critique this Github* list.
*Github’s is owned by Microsoft.
GitHub - guenter/aws-oss-alternatives: Open Source Alternatives to AWS Services
Open Source Alternatives to AWS Services. Contribute to guenter/aws-oss-alternatives development by creating an account on GitHub.GitHub
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AWS, Google Cloud,
That's half the market... Add microshit and you got the market
New De-Google and De-Amazon challenges
Thanks to everyone who participated in the first 5-Week De-Google Challenge on Signal!
I'm about to start another de-Google challenge AND a de-Amazon challenge on Monday.
Here is info on the de-Amazon group. (Signal group and PDF plan)
The de-Google Signal group is here.
And for the de-Google challenge we'll be using this checklist
I hope you'll join (and share) one...or both!.
New De-Google and De-Amazon challenges
Thanks to everyone who participated in the first 5-Week De-Google Challenge on Signal!
I'm about to start another de-Google challenge AND a de-Amazon challenge on Monday.
Here is info on the de-Amazon group. (Signal group and PDF plan)
The de-Google Signal group is here.
And for the de-Google challenge we'll be using [this checklist](punchinguppress.com/post/shake…
I hope you'll join (and share) one...or both!).
Russia clamps down on WhatsApp and Telegram over data sharing
Russia clamps down on WhatsApp and Telegram over data sharing
Calls via foreign-owned platforms curbed as critics say Kremlin is pushing for greater control over Russia’s internetGuardian staff reporter (The Guardian)
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The Ice alert app founder sparking fury in Trump officials: ‘Pam Bondi said I better watch out? Please.’
The Ice alert app founder sparking fury in Trump officials: ‘Pam Bondi said I better watch out? Please.’
After IceBlock’s launch in April, Kristi Noem attacked developer Joshua Aaron and his wife was fired from the DoJ. The attention has only led to more raids being reportedSam Wolfson (The Guardian)
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presente pignanza con aggiornamenti stellari ci porta al futuro sempre più conifero (aggiornamenti Pignio)
Nonostante il corrente clima della mia terra ormai sia talmente tanto seccante da portare quasi difficoltà a respirare, figurarsi esistere (…nonostante sia un clima umido, che assurdo paradosso), stranamente in questo agosto non sto scadendo troppo nel rotting… e, infatti, piano piano il Pignio (che, manco a farlo apposta, sotto sotto in questo periodo dell’anno […]
octospacc.altervista.org/2025/…
presente pignanza con aggiornamenti stellari ci porta al futuro sempre più conifero (aggiornamenti Pignio)
Nonostante il corrente clima della mia terra ormai sia talmente tanto seccante da portare quasi difficoltà a respirare, figurarsi esistere (…nonostante sia un clima umido, che assurdo paradosso), stranamente in questo agosto non sto scadendo troppo nel rotting… e, infatti, piano piano il Pignio (che, manco a farlo apposta, sotto sotto in questo periodo dell’anno ci sta benissimo, ricordando le pinete a mare insomma) sta ancora crescendo, e ad ora credo sia tipo in quello stato perfettamente a metà tra la goduria infinita data dall’idea passata del primo rilascio, e la cristallizzazione definitiva come prevista da una versione finale più futura che inglobi tutto quello che deve essere necessario per godere non solo infinitamente, ma sul serio… 😤Quindi eh eh… ehh boh. Nonostante io non abbia ancora completamente sistemato le robe di multi-utente, e in generale mancano ancora diverse cose relative ad un uso più da social network (per copiare Pinterest proprio per benino, insomma), le funzioni generali sono già di livello pazzo: feed Atom (in uscita) messo a punto, OCR automatico per le immagini tramite Tesseract (…nonostante faccia assolutamente schifo su foto con font strani o colori merdosi, purtroppo, ed è tutto dire che sia comunque la libreria open-source di OCR che funziona meglio al mondo), il salvataggio dei video che ora funziona bene… wow… (Ci sono poi anche miglioramenti generali sull’interfaccia, tipo che ho migliorato ancora un po’ le pagine di gestione e visualizzazione, oltre ad aver aggiunto la localizzazione in italiano oltre che in inglese… ma queste cose puntualmente quando ci sono non vengono apprezzate, e quando mancano invece arrivano i reclami, di utenti per giunta mai paganti…) 😻
Però, il pezzo proprio grosso ora sono i nuovi tipi di elementi supportati, perché con questi si passa davvero da “ma che è, Pinterest senza glitch?” a “wow, o’ Pign!!!“… perché per foto e video sono bravi tutti, ma i file audio molti se li dimenticano, i post di puro testo ma con immagini di sfondo non esistono da nessuna parte (…se non su Facebook, dal quale ancora non ho finito di copiare cose), i documenti (PDF) nessuno sa come visualizzarli, e i modelli 3D sono praticamente inconcepibili… e invece il Pignio ha già tutto ciò, ora!!! (E le faville arriveranno a breve.) Non ho finito finito, c’è ancora lavoro da fare per perfezionare queste categorie, ma intanto io delivero (…e solo per stavolta risparmio il mondo dal raccontare l’irreale trafila dell’orrore che renderizzare testo potenzialmente non-ASCII sotto forma di immagini lato server implica, ma il README ne fa indirettamente accenno). 💣
Ecco però, a proposito di cose fatte a metà… Per questi nuovi elementi, che potrebbero in alcuni casi non avere proprio una miniatura visiva (come molti file audio), o per cui comunque non ho ancora potuto aggiungere una generazione automatica, ho aggiunto semplici emoji come icone segnaposto nell’interfaccia, che comunque è basata su queste liste a griglia e su elementi che hanno una certa presenza fisica visuale… e il fatto tremendo è che ho accidentalmente scatenato delle vibe che mi sembrano irrealmente buffe. Non tanto il foglio di carta per indicare i documenti, che non è nulla di strano, e nemmeno le scatole per indicare modelli 3D, che non è troppo una forzatura nonostante faccia ridere pensare che quella è una scatola che contiene l’oggetto 3D, che quindi si apre cliccandoci, rivelando l’oggetto… quanto le note musicali per i file audio, e qui ormai capisco che sono completamente da buttare. 🤧
Io giuro che, per qualche motivo evidentemente inspiegabile, pure a distanza di 2 giorni, ancora mi viene assolutamente da ridere a guardare (ma anche solo ad immaginare, poverannuj!!!) questa schermata. Semplicemente i controlli di riproduzione sotto, e l’emoji della nota musicale sopra che funge da icona… non c’è una ceppa di buffo, non c’è un cazzo da ridere, eppure il mio cervello non ne vuole sapere! E non è nemmeno il brano del caso che magari è meme o che; è proprio che la pura idea di questo fatto mi fa pisciare. Boh, o sarà il pacchetto emoji di Windows 10 che è particolarmente buffo a vedersi, o altrimenti ormai è ufficiale che anche il mio senso dell’umorismo, così come altri tratti della mia personalità, si è corrotto… ma ormai l’unica cosa importante è che non si corrompa l’archivio del mio Pignio!!! (E pure se succede, di quello ho frequenti backup.) 🤗
GenAI tools are acting more ‘alive’ than ever; they blackmail people, replicate, and escape
Multiple studies have shown that GenAI models from OpenAI, Anthropic, Meta, DeepSeek, and Alibaba all showed self-preservation behaviors that in some cases are extreme in nature. In one experiment, 11 out of 32 existing AI systems possess the ability to self-replicate, meaning they could create copies of themselves.
So….Judgment Day approaches?
GenAI self-preserves by blackmailing people, replicating itself, and escaping
In tests, generative AI systems showed signs of self-preservation that experts say could spiral out of control.Lucas Mearian (Computerworld)
Brussels Airport ground staff unions refuse to service 'Israel'-bound flights
Unions representing workers at Alyzia, a ground services company operating at Brussels Airport, have called on management to stop providing services to 'Israeli' airline El Al and any other carriers flying to or from 'Israel'.
In a letter sent to company leadership, union representatives demanded that employees be given the choice to opt out of handling baggage or cargo for these flights. The move follows Brussels Airlines’ decision to resume flights to Tel Aviv on Wednesday, August 13, a plan that unions say should only proceed with fully voluntary participation from staff.
In an official joint statement, the Alyzia unions, including Pulse, CNE, and ACV-CSC Transcom, said:
“Since October 2023, genocide has been underway in Gaza and the West Bank against the Palestinian population. Serious violations of humanitarian law and international law continue. Despite this, some airlines have decided to resume flights to Tel Aviv (TLV). Our affiliates refuse to participate in these operations. We will not serve these flights.”
Brussels Airport ground staff unions refuse to service 'Israel'-bound flights
Brussels Airport staff memberRoya News
The mix of weed high with runners high when you get it right is just amazing!
Joint after is still a good call, everything hits harder after exercise when the blood is pumping 😁
Documentary Reveals International Child Trafficking Network in Ukraine
EXPOSED: Documentary Reveals International Child Trafficking Network in Ukraine
A groundbreaking investigative documentary, “The Child Traders”, has uncovered a sprawling criminal network involved in the abducti...Anonymous103 (South Front)
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How to disable Firefox's battery-draining AI features
browser.ml.chat.enabled = false
browser.ml.chat.shortcuts = false
browser.ml.chat.shortcuts.custom = false
browser.ml.chat.sidebar = false
browser.ml.enable = false
browser.tabs.groups.smart.enabled = false
Orion Browser for Linux Gets Exciting Progress Update
Orion Browser for Linux Gets Exciting Progress Update
Kagi's privacy-focused Orion browser for Linux hits Milestone 2 with working tabs, bookmarks, and performance parity with GNOME Web/Epiphany.Joey Sneddon (OMG! Ubuntu!)
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I mean, I'd imagine the goal is to avoid being mediocre.
If Orion fully supports the Firefox extensions I use and is as privacy respecting as I expect, I'll likely switch to it as soon as I can. I'm sick of Firefox prioritizing features very few people want.
Open source =/= private. Chromium and Firefox are open source, and both have horrible privacy defaults. I have far more trust in Kagi than Mozilla or Google. There are many ways to verify privacy than other than reading the source code.
Besides, they have shared that they plan to open source the browser once the project is ready, and some components are already open source. Making a project open-source is a much bigger task than people realize. While community contributions may take some maintenance load off of your staff, they now become responsible for much more external code review, which requires more scrutiny due to coming from outside sources.
how do you verify privacy without access to the source code? open source != privacy but open source helps a ton to verify it
btw the kagi people have been saying they'll open source it at some point for ages, and in my experience those promises are usually just promises. I'll believe it when i see it
They've been open sourcing parts of it the entire time. Looks to me like they're doing what they said.
You can easily monitor network connections to see what addresses its sending packets to. You can't collect information without sending it somewhere. Run Firefox through a proxy, and you'll see it is far from private. The source code will show you what they're sending, but nothing about what they're doing with it after it's received.
We have to wait and see if it's really mediocre. Gnome Web certainly has performance issues, but those may be due to WebkitGTK.
Orion is not using WebkitGTK, despite using GTK and Libadwaita. Their port may not have the same performance issues.
And when I say performance issues, I don't mean benchmarks. Gnome Web actually does pretty decent on benchmarks, but things like scrolling with a mouse just don't feel smooth (but do with a trackpad).
If you’re itching to test Orion for Linux, you’ll have to wait. No public builds are available yet, and when testing versions do arrive, they’ll initially be restricted to paid Orion+ and Kagi subscribers.If reading this has you itching to try it out, you’ll have to wait. No public builds of Orion’s Linux port are available for testing, and when available, the plan is to only give paid Orion+ and Kagi subscribers first dibs – crushing, but there is a reason for it.
Seems they didn't give it a proofread before publishing. 😛
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Paid search engine makes sense to me but paid browser does not. The browser's target audience will have a better experience using a free of charge and Open Source browser than a paid one because the paid browser won't integrate very well with package managers.
This is off topic but their search engine pricing is quite scummy. Either you pay $5 for 300 searches per month, which is too little, or you pay $10 for unlimited searches, which is too many for a mere mortal. They are trying to up-sell the $10 subscription.
The browser isnt paid though. help.kagi.com/orion/faq/faq.ht…
I agree the $5 a month option is pretty useless, but I also think $10 is completely reasonable for everything you get.
Also even if it was paid why would it have issues with a package manager? Paid software generally just uses an account or license key to verify payment, with the executable being frwely available. JetBrains and Burp Suite are two software that come to mind and both are in many repositories.
Edit: To be clear, the browser will only be for Kagi and Orion+ members during the testing phase, likely just to control the size of the testing group. After that it will be free.
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Notion, Todoist, Things 3, OmniFocus, Asana, Trello, Any.do, TickTick.
This article is a cry for help
KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid)
That's why i use Markor on, it saves on markdown (.md), text (.txt) files, and sync with Syncthing to other devices.
Without databases, or third party hosts, i can open any file on other devices using the apps of my choice, can use Markor on Android and nvim on PC.
No need to pay extra or use specific apps to work.
I also tried other not taking apps, but I needed to use some electron app that uses 1GB RAM to edit a markdown file, and decrypt some proprietary online storage. Why use some overcomplicated software when i can do the same Kwrite or nano
Saying Obsidian uses just TXT files suggest, that I could use any editor and that Obsidians file format is compatible with any editor.
That is technically the truth, but the problem is, that if I decide to use another editor I might get problems because of the lacking ability to usefully edit the metadata.
So, if I use Obsidian, the files are de facto not compatible with other editors.
Of course I could switch off of Obsidian and I have the raw data, so I am not locked in. But I think stating that obsidan uses just txt files without any explanation is a bit misleading.
Obsidian is just another WYSIWYG Editor.
What makes it a problwm is the MD-dialect they employ.
For example callouts in obsidian are not possible in the markdown flavor of vs-code.
I can't do thiy in vscode
> [!warning]-
> This is a collapsed warningBut that is what I quite like and I found no other programs which handles as well as Obsidian.
Maybe some parts of vscode markdown with plugins closes the gap.
It's not about the notification, it's about being reminded.
I use a task manager because I can't remember every task I need to do. I use reminders because I can't remember to do the tasks I need to do.
These home chores are not that complex that I need remiders. But I do have a list of stuff to buy, like food and cleaning products, on a shared text file (a shared google keep note actually, forgive me for my sins), and every tuesday or so one of us goes to the market to get those (we alternate).
Basically, whenever I have time to work on something, I try to do the most important and time sensitive things on my todo list.
If I dont have enough time to do those, then I wont, and thats it, what can I do?
Me too, in this way it's more than just a todo list, it's also a time management tool.
I use tasks.org, every morning all my tasks pop up and I defer them into timeslots. Before noon, afternoon, evening. Then I get another reminder at a point where I should be done with the tasks in a previous time slot.
I have a shell alias that opens a task file named YYYY-MM.md. This keeps the notes from getting too long. It has really helped me out in meetings where we need some kind of reference to what decisions were made or when something happened. So it serves as a work log and a task list.
Splitting by month also helps me trim tasks from the list that were not completed but are no longer high priority. They just don't get copied to the new list. I can still look back to see things I had aspired to but never did. Like "yes, you asked me to do that 3 months ago and then it was deprioritized."
I like the archival aspect.
If needed, I can reference older entries.
I repurposed this handling as a makeshift parcel tracking note in Google Keep.
f-droid.org/packages/de.tnmgl.…
I have used flat txt files and also ntoodotxt for other stuff. Sync them all with syncthing.
ntodotxt | F-Droid - Free and Open Source Android App Repository
Manage your todos in a todo.txt filef-droid.org
I tried using org-mode, but eventually returned to simple plain text.
Color notation, or various enriching elements don't help. They actually distract.
There's the task. The task of having a TODO list. Its elements are free form by definition.
I swear, today's tech is 99% arrogant people showing themselves how they know everything, except they don't solve the actual task which is the only thing needed.
Like those over-engineered half-working arcane machines they portray in steampunk settings, except those at least feel cool.
It's like that anecdote about "what buzzes, spins and doesn't bite your ass? - a Soviet machine for biting your ass". 2025 machines for biting your ass do everything, including almost sexual gratification of their developers from using any of a hundred of hipster libraries, frameworks and build systems, and a server component using Firebase, AWS and what not, what they don't do is actually bite your ass. Well, they kinda scratch it.
Doing a lot is not the same as doing better.
Also I fucking hate modern UI\UX design and ergonomics (both lacking).
There's something about the Silicon Valley and everything looking up to it. A culture of authoritarian cheap bullshit, with pretty arrogant people not capable of having a civil discussion, and when they fail that, it's not themselves who they blame.
Honestly it sometimes feels as if all the visible things around were like that. Linux included. Also maybe BTRON for workstations not happening is a bigger tragedy than it would seem.
I just want to be able to start typing right away without worrying where to put the note or what to title it or whatever. Like, I will put a title on it and include some keywords to help me find things again, but I can do that later when I don't need to noting things down...
I’m very happy with Things. Been using it for 7 years with an occasional dip into Todoist and Apple Reminders just out of interest, but always coming back to Things.
It fits exactly how my brain works. The only annoyance is that I cannot tick off recurring tasks before they are scheduled.
GitHub - quillpad/quillpad: Take beautiful markdown notes and stay organized with task lists.
Take beautiful markdown notes and stay organized with task lists. - quillpad/quillpadGitHub
My biggest issue with all these Markdown editors is that the format is text only, forcing other files to be stored independently. It does not support embedded pictures, formulas, etc.
My perfect option uses some format that would allow text, pictures, audio and video, optional LaTeX formatting all in one file, and wouldn't be constrained to a single application that can run it all. At least some apps supporting it should be in a note-taking layout, not a standard office program.
Mobile support would be a banger, too, but is optional.
Essentially, I want a OneNote-like experience without walled garden, bundled in a way that would allow it to be painlessly exported into several other pieces of software, available on Linux.
Any ideas on that?
Not OpenSource, but free, reliable and private, online right in your browser, it's a complete word processor, you can also edit Html, select webpages and paste it in the editor which conserve the original UI with all working links, Files and documets are stored locally in .htm, .pdf or .txt. Blazing fast and works also in mobile, even as PWA.
(Part of the SSuite, it's a hobby project of two elictricians which make money with their workshop, not with these apps, no commercial interests, no ads, logs, tracking or othe crap, no account)
Thanks! Will check it out
P.S. Seems more like a general purpose editor with a twist, though, and not a solid note-taking solition upon the first glance. Thanks for the recommendation anyway!
Well, you can use it as such, storing the notes locally with the corresponding title.
You'll find a lot more on the SSuite, maybe there you'll find something els which may serve you, anyway good to bookmark it, it's pretty usefull.
But I also remember another app, an old Gem, OpenSource which may fullfit your needs, it's a very powerfull tree style note taking app, rich text format and if you need, also syntax highlighting for programming scripts. (Windows, Linux) (.rtf, .txt, scripts)
GitHub - giuspen/cherrytree: cherrytree
cherrytree. Contribute to giuspen/cherrytree development by creating an account on GitHub.GitHub
xournal++, you can write text with your keyboard, latex, you can add audio
you can't add video though
Not sure it fits entirely, but this seems like a superb option for handwritten digital notes which I'd also like to see!
Useful for when I need to quickly insert some formula or figure.
Not really, still MD-based 🙁
Closest to that were Trilium and Zettlr, but again, they store media separately and address it in inconvenient ways.
How so?
I configured Obsidian to throw all media files in one directory.
All files are referenced by a common picture link 
So far the best for me is a mix of Google's Tasks and Notes.
Both hide ticked of tasks, have functional reminders and are accessible from any authenticated device (to be edited).
All others I've tried, lack the hiding of the ticked boxes requiring one to create new pages divided by months, weeks or some other divider.
Ukrainians glorifying Nazi collaborators should be deported – Polish president
Ukrainians glorifying Nazi collaborators should be deported – Polish president
Symbols of Ukrainian Nazi collaborators like Stepan Bandera are “unacceptable” in Poland, President Karol Nawrocki has saidRT
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The AI Tool That Could Make Manufacturing Faster and More Efficient — by Using Lego Bricks
The AI Tool That Could Make Manufacturing Faster and More Efficient — by Using Lego Bricks
A new AI-powered tool created by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University’s School of Computer Science could change the way we manufacture and build things.News
Kobi refused a doctor's AI. She was told to go elsewhere
Kobi refused a doctor's AI. She was told to go elsewhere
Unregulated AI scribes raising privacy, security concerns.Information Age
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Ecosia teaches how to activate ads for Ublock, but not for Ublock Origin.
Karate or Tae Kwon Do for kids?
Which one do you think could fit better for her age and also considering she likes it which is better in the long term?
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Is it possible to run qbittorrent and protonvpn in a VM?
Does anyone know how to run qbittorrent and protonvpn in a VM? When I try to run the qbittorrent setup app I get this message (image below) and I don't see anything mentioning a VM in the qbittorrent [dot] org forum.
I am new to torrenting, so I don't really know what to do. I figured/assumed that torrenting/seeding in a VM might be safer as it is another layer deep, and that it may help keep traffic separate (inside the VM: I'd be using a vpn and torrenting, and outside the VM: I'd not be using a vpn and just regular internet surfing). Is this possible?
Thank you.
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Yes that would work fine, you can pretty much run anything inside a VM. So yeah a properly set up VM with internet access + VPN client + anything else you want to install will work.
Not too sure what the issue is that you are encountering, you'd need to update your post with a lot more info. My suggestion is to start over and make sure the VM is set up correctly e.g. install the OS in the VM, verify it has normal internet access. Then install the VPN client in the VM, verify VPN is working properly. After that qBittorrent or anything else can be installed inside the VM. (probably best to save snapshots of your VM after each step in case you screw up and need to roll back)
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Hmm I think your issue is specific to Windows Sandbox. I've only ever used full VM software (Microsoft Hyper-V, VirtualBox, etc.).
Never touched Windows Sandbox but it sounds like a sort of hybrid VM/Container thing.. I could be wrong 😀 hopefully someone else knows more about using that or maybe you'll need to post in another community to ask about it.
EDIT: Looking into it a bit more, Windows Sandbox isn't actually a VM. So you're really asking if you can run multiple apps (VPN+torrent client+whatever) inside a sandbox app like Windows Sandbox..I don't think that's how sandbox apps work, they usually are for sandboxing a single app, so you may need to experiment and figure it out. Everyone looking at your post is thinking you're asking about VMs, not sandboxes 😛
e.g. see this superuser.com/a/1775271 answer
also learn.microsoft.com/en-us/wind…
Doesn't Windows Sandbox require Hyper-V to run? How is it working with Hyper-V not enabled?
If my knowledge is correct, Windows Sandbox requires Hyper-V to run right? But when I enable Windows Sandbox on the Windows Features window, Hyper-V did not get enabled so I wanted to know what was...Super User
Oh, you're using Sandbox - yea, I could see certain checks failing as the app will be intentionally prevented from accessing certain things to be sandboxed.
Sandbox isn't the same as a VM.
You can run VirtualBox, but it's performance is notably less than VMware, and the latest version of VMware Workstation is free once again.
No reason it shouldn't work.
Whats your VM software, what's the host and (especially) the guest OS?
I've seen this error with an app in Windows, while running it in an admin account, haha. No idea what these app devs are doing to cause these messages.
Keep in mind under Linux, distros today often don't setup the first user as root, but as a limited account (there's a separate root account with it's own password).
Windows and Win Sandbox
I’ve seen this error with an app in Windows, while running it in an admin account, haha. No idea what these app devs are doing to cause these messages.
Oh really? Was the admin account you are referring to outside or inside the VM?
I don't recall if it was in a VM or not, it doesn't really matter. A VM is just a logical system, the OS runs the same as it would on bare hardware (for things like this).
I suspect what I see in Windows is a result of devs designing for an prior version of Windows, and some system call returns differently enough in a newer version. The times I've seen it, the apps work fine, which makes me thing it's a validation that fails.
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I prefer containers...
theres one available called gluetun that can run proton vpn..
then I have a deluge (torrent client) running in another container that specifies gluetun as it's network source.
this way if the VPN drops I don't bleed my actual ip
these containers are pre-built and public so config is fairly minimal
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nope, i've not had any issues with ports, but im using deluge.
the container network management handles most of that nonsense, the vpn is treated as a native internet connection
Yup many people had the same issue which is why someone created a docker container mod for LinuxServer's qbit docker image:
github.com/t-anc/GSP-Qbittoren…
I've been using it for over a year now and it works well.
GitHub - t-anc/GSP-Qbittorent-Gluetun-sync-port-mod: Docker mod for Linuxserver's Qbittorrent image to sync gluetun's forwarded port. Can also work with any qBittorrent image as a standalone container.
Docker mod for Linuxserver's Qbittorrent image to sync gluetun's forwarded port. Can also work with any qBittorrent image as a standalone container. - t-anc/GSP-Qbittorent-Gluetun-sync-port...GitHub
qBittorrent with GlueTUN VPN in Docker on a Synology NAS
In this guide I will take you through the steps to get qBittorrent up and running in Container Manager and a separate VPN container on a Synology NASDr_Frankenstein (DrFrankenstein's Tech Stuff)
I use this container with AirVPN; github.com/haugene/docker-tran…
Port forwarding was incredibly easy to setup with this VPN, and transmission is enough for what I have. As a bonus, this docker container in particular has a shitload of documentation and support tickets behind it, which made troubleshooting a lot easier for me.
GitHub - haugene/docker-transmission-openvpn: Docker container running Transmission torrent client with WebUI over an OpenVPN tunnel
Docker container running Transmission torrent client with WebUI over an OpenVPN tunnel - haugene/docker-transmission-openvpnGitHub
Bare metal = not in a VM
Why are you uploading to email? Can't you just download the torrent in the VM and check it in virustotal there?
Yeah it would be no different from running without a VM. The issue you're having isn't related to it being a VM.
Your popup there looks like it is because the user account you're using doesn't have admin privileges on windows. If this is a fresh install, I have no idea how you've ended up in that situation, as the user account you create on install is admin by default.
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should I just not use a VM while torrenting and using a VPN then?
If I don't use a VM, is it possible to torrent with a VPN but surf the net without the vpn concurrently?
A VM is a good way to do it, the only real downside is just the space used by a whole extra OS install.
Most VPN clients will have an option to route only specific applications over the VPN. Just remember to also lock the Bittorrent client to the VPN network interface to prevent leaks if the VPN stops working.
If I don't use a VM, is it possible to torrent with a VPN but surf the net without the vpn concurrently?
This is called split tunneling and not all VPNs offer it as a feature but you can use your own VPN client with a wireguard or openvpn config from your VPN to get the best of both worlds. On Windows, I was running WireSock to accomplish this
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Preferences -> Advanced -> Network Interface
Then select the VPN connection. That's what I do for qbittorrent. Not sure about other programs.
I'm not the only person who thinks Kill switches don't live up to their name
Bind always. Kill switches don't work reliably.
reddit.com/r/torrents/comments…Kill switches can fail. Always bind your client to your vpn adapter.
reddit.com/r/torrents/comments…While using a kill-switch is a good step, it may not provide complete protection. Combine it with binding your VPN network interface to qBittorrent for added privacy and security
reddit.com/r/surfshark/comment…Killswitches aren't perfect. Binding is.
reddit.com/r/surfshark/comment…Yep binding is so much better than killswitch.
reddit.com/r/surfshark/comment…torrenting with kill switch turned on, leaks?
reddit.com/r/ProtonVPN/comment…That's not a killswitch, that's binding your connection. It literally says that right in the screenshot. smh, kids these days. Killswitch is managed by your VPN, totally separate thing, and can still leak your IP at times.
reddit.com/r/Piracy/comments/v…I've had an occurrence even in windows with kill-switch on where the app closed and downloads continued.
reddit.com/r/unRAID/comments/1…Instead of kill switch (which fails a lot on many VPNs) you should bind your VPN to your torrent client.
reddit.com/r/ProtonVPN/comment…Bind interface. Kill switch is the wrong way to go.
reddit.com/r/Piracy/comments/1…Kill switch is not reliable and can expose your IP. Please search for "how to bind vpn qBitTorrent" and follow the directions to bind the internet adapter to your vpn. That is the only safe way.
reddit.com/r/Piracy/comments/1…Bind qBit to your VPN. This stops all torrent traffic if your VPN drops it's connection or you forgot to connect. It's more reliable than a Kill Switch.
reddit.com/r/qBittorrent/comme…Kill switches are unreliable, use binding instead
reddit.com/r/torrents/comments…Bruh needs to learn how to bind his VPN & Torrent Client... Y'all, kill switches are NOT good enough.
reddit.com/r/Piracy/comments/1…Bind your connection. Kill switches are functionally useless.
reddit.com/r/torrents/comments…
These are what I could find in the last 15 minutes, hopefully this is enough.
setting the network mode on the application docker to the gluetun service
As long as you do this, you're good
Spare yourself a lot of wasted disk space, Windows stupidity, and RAM by just using any mainline Linux distro (e.g. Ubuntu) instead of Windows for the guest. I don't even mean a headless Linux. You can keep the GUI if you prefer and want. That will still be a small fraction of the ram, compute, and disk space for the VM than a Windows guest.
And a tip for the technique: don't download torrents into the virtual hard drive for the VM. Download into a shared/mounted directory.
Honestly, if you are going the Linux route, you might as well get a headless Linux setup (no GUI, just command line), install qbittorrent-nox and access qbitborrent via the webUI.
You will save a massive amount of RAM, desk space and probably even CPU time.
Don't run your torrent client in a VM, that doesn't actually provide you with any additional security.
Use a Docker container instead. Binhex has torrent+vpn containers that will fetch the random open port number from Proton and pipe it into qBittorrent for you, as well as make sure the port is updated if the VPN drops. The container also acts as a killswitch.
Using a docker container provides you with the exact amount of extra protection as using a VM: zilch.
Only advantage is you can use other people's config easily.
- signed, someone happily using their own VM-based setup
Study: Social media probably can’t be fixed
It's no secret that much of social media has become profoundly dysfunctional. Rather than bringing us together into one utopian public square and fostering a healthy exchange of ideas, these platforms too often create filter bubbles or echo chambers. A small number of high-profile users garner the lion's share of attention and influence, and the algorithms designed to maximize engagement end up merely amplifying outrage and conflict, ensuring the dominance of the loudest and most extreme users—thereby increasing polarization even more.Numerous platform-level intervention strategies have been proposed to combat these issues, but according to a preprint posted to the physics arXiv, none of them are likely to be effective. And it's not the fault of much-hated algorithms, non-chronological feeds, or our human proclivity for seeking out negativity. Rather, the dynamics that give rise to all those negative outcomes are structurally embedded in the very architecture of social media. So we're probably doomed to endless toxic feedback loops unless someone hits upon a brilliant fundamental redesign that manages to change those dynamics.
Co-authors Petter Törnberg and Maik Larooij of the University of Amsterdam wanted to learn more about the mechanisms that give rise to the worst aspects of social media: the partisan echo chambers, the concentration of influence among a small group of elite users (attention inequality), and the amplification of the most extreme divisive voices. So they combined standard agent-based modeling with large language models (LLMs), essentially creating little AI personas to simulate online social media behavior. "What we found is that we didn't need to put any algorithms in, we didn't need to massage the model," Törnberg told Ars. "It just came out of the baseline model, all of these dynamics."
Study: Social media probably can’t be fixed
“The [structural] mechanism producing these problematic outcomes is really robust and hard to resolve.”…Jennifer Ouellette (Ars Technica)
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Uso da Inteligência Artificial na Administração Pública de SC em pauta na ALESC
Está em pauta hoje (13/8), na ALESC – Assembleia Legislativa de Santa Catarina, um Projeto de Lei de autoria do deputado Mário Motta que dispõe sobre “os princípios e diretrizes para o uso da Inteligência Artificial no âmbito da Administração Pública Estadual“, e estabelece outras providências. O texto do PL pode ser acessado aqui (arquivo PDF).
O PL estabelece critérios importantes, como “não discriminação”, “transparência” e “auditabilidade”, mas conta com o seguinte texto no Art. 7°: “O Poder Público facilitará a adoção de sistemas de inteligência artificial na Administração Pública e na prestação de serviços públicos, visando à eficiência e à redução dos custos”. Como seria essa facilitação? Como comentou o amigo e engenheiro de dados Cudo, essa “redução de custos” também é outro ponto que precisa de mais atenção, pois pode até gerar mais custos, além de questões como a necessidade de capacitação dos servidores.
Mas o que mais me chamou a atenção é a necessidade de priorizar (ou até condicionar) o uso de IAs desenvolvidas no Brasil e, de preferência, em código aberto, que é auditável de fato e transparente, já que se trata da utilização de informações estatais. Em tempos de debate sobre a soberania digital, seria um ponto fundamental.
O ideal mesmo seria realizar uma audiência pública com pesquisadores, representantes da academia e organizações do terceiro setor dedicadas ao assunto.
Início - Soberania Digital
Rede para debates, trocas de informações e organização de ações pela Soberania Digital. Sua participação é fundamental para construirmos um futuro digital!Diego (Soberania.digital)
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I started losing my digital privacy in 1974, aged 11
We already live in a world where pretty much every public act - online or in the real world - leaves a mark in a database somewhere. But how far back does that record extend? I recently learned that record goes back further than I'd seriously imagined.On my recent tour of the United States (making it through immigration checks in record time, thanks to facial recognition), I caught that bug, the same one that brought the world to a halt half a decade ago. But I caught it early, so I knew that I could probably get some treatment.
That led to a quick trip to an 'Urgent Care' - the frontline medical center for most Americans. At the check-in counter, the check-in nurse asked to see some ID, so I handed over my Australian driver's license. The nurse looked at the license and typed some of the info on it into a computer, then they looked up at me and asked: "Are you the same Mark Pesce who lived at...?" and then proceeded to recite an address that I resided at more than half a century ago.
Dumbstruck, I said, "Yes...? And how did you know that? I haven't lived there in nearly 50 years. I've never been in here before - I've barely ever been in this town before. Where did that come from?"
"Oh," they replied. "We share our patient data records with Massachusetts General Hospital. It's probably from them?"
I remembered having a bit of minor surgery as an 11 year old, conducted at that facility. 51 years ago. That's the only time I'd ever been a patient at Massachusetts General Hospital.
Good thing we're paying for all these data centers!
I started losing my digital privacy in 1974, aged 11
Column: An encounter with the healthcare system reveals sickening decisions about dataMark Pesce (The Register)
[Episode] Turkey! Time to Strike • Turkey! - Episode 6 discussion
Turkey!, episode 6
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ターキー!
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- Info - AniList
- Info - Kitsu
- Info - MyAnimeList
- Info - Official Site (Japanese)
- Social - Twitter (Japanese)
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This post was created by a bot. Message the mod team for feedback and comments.
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Turkey!
At the bowling club of Ikkokukan High School in Nagano Prefecture, Mai, the club captain, prioritizes everyone's enjoyment over winning. However, her passionate junior, Rina, declares, "I want to win.MyAnimeList.net
What's up with this straight up pro-china and pro-russia stuff on Lemmy lately?
What's up with this straight up pro-china and pro-russia stuff on Lemmy lately?
It's not even praising the people of China and Russia, but rather their gov directly.
Obviously the states have problems, and the EU to a lesser degree, but they at least have some human rights.
Is this some kind of organized disinformation campaign?
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Archaeologists Uncover Majestic Eastern Baths in Ancient Roman Ilici
Archaeologists Uncover Majestic Eastern Baths in Ancient Roman Ilici
After nearly a decade of meticulous research, the archaeological team from the University of Alicante (UA) hasGuillermo Carvajal (La Brújula Verde)
China's green energy boom could spell the end of the fossil fuel age
ABC News
ABC News provides the latest news and headlines in Australia and around the world.Jo Lauder (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)
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not until we actually stop using fossil fuels. we are still using more fossil fuels than ever. And when/if renewables actually start eating into the fossil fuel market, then fossil fuels will get cheaper. So either we are going to burn through most of our fossil fuels regardless, or we will eventually need to take some kind of punitive actions against using them.
anyway, you'd think republicans would be on board with renewables for exactly the same reasons as china. it makes economic and national security sense if that's all you care about.
anyway, you’d think republicans would be on board with renewables for exactly the same reasons as china. it makes economic and national security sense if that’s all you care about.
Not for them, and not for the horizon they care about. They're (and the US as a whole) heavily invested in fossil fuels, so economically for them it makes the most sense to squeeze as much profit from those investments as possible.
my dad once said that if he was in Bush's position, he would have used 9/11 to justify decoupling from Saudi oil and push for more solar and wind development
I still think about that. So many missed off-ramps to this...
Actually right now US is not dependent on Saudi. Thanks to shale revolution it is now a net exporter.
Though, yeah that still pollutes and it didn't remove our allies' dependence so. The green tech should have been the next step.
Only up to a point, fossil fuels getting cheaper will reach a point where it wont be worth extraction outside of for niche customers.
If renewables become plentiful and cheap enough globally fossil fuels will more or less die off in use, even if right now they're going upward in use its temporary. The problem is we're stuck with severe consequences even if they do eventually largely stop. We're stuck with severe consequences if they stop this very instant in fact.
What we really want is renewable energy to become so cheap and plentiful that not only do fossil fuels stop being used but carbon capture technology's high energy cost becomes null and it just becomes a net good. ATM the technology is useless because the high energy cost ends up just putting more co2 into the air anyway than is removed.
Incorrect. Why are you speaking in an authoritative voice when you aren't knowledgeable about the topic?
Percentage of fossil fuels is down -
worldenergydata.org/wp-content…
And the absolute amount of fossil fuels is down -
worldenergydata.org/wp-content…
Source -
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This moron doesn't understand that green energy was a new sector where US could dominate for decades.
A lot of countries are forced to import fossil fuels as they can't produce their own so replacing that with local alternatives actually increases national security.
Do people think China went into renewable energy because suddenly Xi became a tree hugger?
From what I've gleaned of the ravings of the angry stupid right blogosphere, a lot of people actually do think that only tree huggers want green energy.
And I have little doubt that that's an opinion that Trump shares, but that's not his main motivation in all of this. His main motivation is big fat bribes from the fossil fuel industry.
China's electrification efforts are substantial and to be applauded and encouraged.
The problem is when you tell one sided stories, the important details get lost.
This is the most recent figure on China's total energy mix from the IEA. They have a stupid long way to go on emissions.
It sounds nice to say they installed more solar in a month that australia has ever in it's history. Let's look at the trends...
Coal is up. Way up. Why did this article lose the narrative so badly? Because it's a fluff piece, not an informed, intelligent discussion on emissions.
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Literally worse than America.
Man, they're twisting the data hard to try to make China look good here. They're falling back on per capita, and cumulative to try to hide that they're the largest emitter of carbon by far, much of it is from burning coal, which they are still doing much more than any other country.
This is greenwashing, nothing more.
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bustling...cities?
not what I've seen. I've seen entire 30 floor buildings empty.
just because there is a "city" doesn't mean it's populated.
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Oh come on! Cheetolini knows best that fossil fuels are the future. All this woke green energy talk.
~I'm case I have to spell it out, I'm being sarcastic.~
Vanishing Culture: Why Preserve Flash? [Internet Archive Blogs]
Flash flew across the mid-2000s internet sky in a blaze of glory and unbridled creativity. It was the backbone of menus and programs and even critical applications for working with sites. But by 2009, bugs and compatibility issues, the introduction of HTML5 with many of the same features, and a declaration that Flash would no longer be welcome on Apple’s iOS devices, sent Flash into a spiral that it never recovered from.But thanks to the Archive’s emulation, Flash lives again, at least as self-contained creations you can play in your browser.
What emerges, as thousand of these Flash animations and games arrive, is what part it played in the lives of people now in their twenties and thirties and beyond. “Almost like being given a moment to breathe, or to walk into a museum space and see distant memories hung up on walls as classic art,” our patrons wrote in.
Book Talk: Lucky Day with Chuck Tingle (IN-PERSON)
The Internet Archive is thrilled to host Chuck Tingle and his upcoming novel Lucky Day, for a book talk presented by The Booksmith! We can\'t wait to see you there, […]\nblog.archive.org
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Gaming on Linux hasn't been great so far...
tl;dw their performance numbers don't match up to what we've seen in the past. Some pretty significant decreases in performance over Windows. I think there's clearly some sort of configuration error there. They also ran into the old dual-boot problem where Windows overwrites the Linux partition.
In my opinion this is lazy and irresponsible reporting. I don't at all mean to discount his experience, they are legitimate concerns, and it's fine to show the struggles of using Linux, but it's very clear he (admittedly) doesn't know what he's doing, and they need to consult an expert (or even a casual user) to figure out what the problem is before reporting. He said in the last video that Bazzite reached out to him to let them know if he has any problems so they could help but he obviously did not do that. As is, it just makes Linux/Bazzite look bad.
I hope he follows up with another video discussing the solutions.
What do you think?
- YouTube
Profitez des vidéos et de la musique que vous aimez, mettez en ligne des contenus originaux, et partagez-les avec vos amis, vos proches et le monde entier.www.youtube.com
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¯\(ツ)/¯ average non-linux tech youtuber video. Something goes wrong on windows = user error, something goes bad on linux = OS fault
They also ran into the old dual-boot problem where Windows overwrites the Linux partition.
This one kinda makes me laugh tho. Other than work I don't know why people would put up with that level of bullshitery from an OS
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Their critic seem fair? Sure the benchmarks are a bit unfortunate for Linux because all except Cyberpunk 2077 are games not very popular and not optimized well in Proton, but they don't seem to have selected them specifically to make Linux look bad.
And the boot error... well yes those things sometimes happen, especially when you dual boot and are a Linux noob 🤷
I think part of the issue is people don't remember all of the little tricks they've learned over the years getting windows to work for them. So when they find Linux and have to learn a whole bag of them it feels like it's not worth it compared to something that "just works" (in their mind anyway)
Duel booting definitely isn't a viable strategy for most people imho. The best situation would be seeing crappy everyday laptops sold in bestbuy or whatever with either windows or some gaming configured Linux. People shouldn't have to think about the OS as much as possible
Prebuilts and preconfigured systems are where most people live. It's also often where most gamers start before diving into something more sophisticated for the sake of things like performance
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A few months ago, I switched from gaming on Windows to full time gaming on Linux. I have the same hardware for both but my Linux gaming experience is much jankier than it was on Windows. I have more available resources (Mint is much leaner than 11, even with cutting out Windows bloat), but games have odd hang ups and crashes that never happened before my switch.
Discord also works poorer in Linux, so I have to mess with that during gaming sessions as well. It worked much better after I removed the version I installed through snap but now I have to manually download and install an update every time it wants an update, which is frequently. Discord definitely worked better on Windows.
Also, my buddy and I built identical gaming computers at the same time and he stayed on Windows. My computer will crash or stutter on lower settings in games while his doesn't at the default detected settings, which are usually higher since I had to back mine off to ward off the issues.
That all said, it feels like I am gaming on XP in 2003-4. Games mostly work but GPU (NVIDIA) drivers are a pain in the ass and I occasionally have to do some troubleshooting to get things to work and and deal with crashes that I did not have before the switch.
I think the switch is for the best overall but I won't pretend like Linux gaming is equal (or better) to gaming on Windows. I am learning a ton about Linux but overall, out of the box, I miss Windows features and accessories and Linux needs a lot more configuration to do the same things. And even then, it is still not at the same quality for quite a few features.
Nvidia gpus are in a huge amount of PCs out there right now. many users are going to make the switch to linux not knowing about the closed source drivers. yes its obviously Nvidias fault but dont be so brazenly "WELL DUH" when most people arent going to buy a new GPU just to test out an different OS. or even think to buy from a particular company due to business practices that only affect people on linux.
that being said im currently on a Nvidia GPU and for the most part Im having minimal issues. If @hobowillie needs some help I will gladly offer my limited knowledge but I understand if you've given up on Linux for the foreseeable future.
My issues are also fairly minimal. I do have crashes and stutters I did not have before switching to Linux, but they have been manageable and (mostly) isolated events.
I had issues with Warhammer 40,000: Darktide the most but the issues seem to have mostly subsided and I don't play that game all that much, anyhow. It was the one I had to really knock back settings and turn things off that were on by default to make it work reliably.
I had the most trouble with Dune: Awakening but that is a Funcom game and people were reporting similar issues on Windows to what I was having. But notably, my friend with the exact same hardware was not experiencing those issues. But we synced our settings and seem to have similar performance now that Funcom has released a handful of patches and hotfixes for the game.
I do have issues where, when powering on my computer, it will have one of my 2 monitors (usually the primary one) just flashing red, green, and blue in order on the screen until I restart it. Sometimes the screen comes up completely distorted. But my other monitor is fine and I just restart the computer and it's fine. If you have any ideas for that, I'd love to hear them. It happens maybe 1 in 10 start ups and only really inconveniences me for like 30s but it'd be nice to know why it's doing that. It seems to happen more right after driver updates.
The only thing i can think of that would cause youre monitor issue would be not having nvidia-drm enabled in the kernel params. The stutters and what not, might just be the games themselves and their compatibility with the version of proton you use. I highly recommend testing It with proton-ge if you havent before. In my experience ge(Glorious Eggroll) has the best compatibility with newer titles beyond that you can try the proton-experimental. Contrary to its name the experiemntal branch is fairly stable and fixes alot of games.
For info on getting a specific game running well or checking compatibility before you buy protondb.com is great! users upload their steam launch options for the specific game to enhance or stabilize their experience.
If youre using grub and you dont like using the the terminal or file explorer there is a gui software called grub-customizer that I use to quickly theme and edit kernel params
Note:(Its not exactly smart to use software like this because it essentially has the full control of the pc. Even if its not malicious its still not recomended because it can break things but with proper back ups etc I think its worth it)
Best of luck man! feel free to reach out again for any thing else or more indepth help.
Discord also works poorer in Linux
Certainly not Linux' fault if developers write shitty Electron apps and then put a bunch of OS-specific stuff in it.
Also, try Vesktop? I like that I can customize my experience a little more with the plugins.
Snap
All my homies hate Snap.
I didn't say it was any fault of Linux that Discord doesn't work as well. Just that it's a fact that it doesn't work as well, regardless of the reason. It has issues in Windows, too.
I'd never heard of Vesktop. I read up on it a bit and I might swap over to it today if I have some time to work on it.
I was trying out different installation types and Discord was my only foray into Snap. Probably not using it again. haha
Lazy reporting...
Then why post here and get clicks for their shitty youtube channel?
What I think:
If i install Windows, latest drivers and steam I am set. No need to know what i am doing, no need to consult an expert. Just: Next, next finish, yes yes, sure, here is the soul of my first born, next yes, sure. Fuck off with that edge update. Yes next end.
The moment bootloaders etc can break, whatever the cause, is the moment you lose 60% of your users.
The moment you need to consult an expert to game you lose another 20%.
That's what he's doing. He is not catering or talking to you, the experienced Linux user, he's talking to your nephew who just finished building his first game pc. He's saying: You little guy... don't bother just yet. Get acquainted with everything and then try this.
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I find it very interesting that as a windows user, for years learning the OS was this collaborative effort for me and the community at large. Wed google everything, find obscure forums with equally obscure sollutions, and then eventually youtube tutorials. It was always a community educatiing themselves further in infinite directions.
Why does it seem like people dont want this with linux? I get that it might be too slow for some people and they just need something to "work". I see so many people on various comment sections saying "yeah i tried it had issues and switched back" basically the same experience that the video portrayed. Why was that same person able to suffer through windows for 25+years but this is just "too much".
I personally feel that most of the linux community has been a breath of fresh air. I feel stupid sure, but at the same time its rewarding to communicate with others and find a solution.
Even some people within the linux community feel this way, telling users to simply read the man page or the official forums to find solutions rather than teach them to use the man pages and arch wiki for example. Its honestly baffling to me on both ends.
Open question to all: what is your level of profiency? How do you learn about linux? Do you think there is a problem or is it a loud minority of users?
I see what you are saying, but thats where the collaborative effort comes in. The only reason you are able to get to a solution so efficeintly with windows is because the base level users of windows are more educated in their OS. There is 25+ years of effort from millions of base level or above users. The fact that windows hasnt changed very much since 98 helps alot too, The solutions from all those years ago generally still apply.
Edit: also those solutions are noticed by microsoft and often get implemented directly into the OS.
All that is to say we need YOU, and users like you, to recreate the educational enviorments that seem so second nature to us with windows.
Its a very positive feedback loop we make a forum post "hey I have this issue" and either someone would allready have a solution or youd figure it out with help from the community and update the post with your workaround or fix, etc. This still exists obviously but I feel like we dont appreciate enough how many years of this had to happen before we got to the point we are now with windows.
I can understand not feeling like you have the free time for all of this effort. but to me the only reason we feel that way is because we still have windows as a fallback that works. Where as we didnt see linux or mac os as a viable alternative back then.
Open question to all: what is your level of profiency?
I'd say that I'm pretty proficient. I haven't done LFS yet but haven't really spent more than a few mins with windows except for a handful of times for about 15 years. The one time that I did so recently was to try to get a PSVR2 to work. That experience was so awful (driver disks for OS install, ADS FUCKING EVERYWHERE THAT CANNOT BE DISABLED, etc) that I quickly gave up and ended up killing the VM. I'd dinner become a hermit in a cave than abide by OS-level ads that can only be partially disabled by mucking around in the registry.
Sorry. A bit off-topic. I just really hate ads. Erm... I've done some basic tutorials on writing drivers for the kernel and have been working on reverse engineering a driver for some AR glasses, though I've not made it too far.
How do you learn about linux?
My initial learning was because I lost my XP serial in college and decided to give Linux a try. From there, a lot of my learning has been through work, which I got due to my teaching myself how to use Linux.
Do you think there is a problem or is it a loud minority of users?
It's both. I'd say that it really is going to vary based upon the sub-community. Unfortunately, there's a lot of toxicity in the gaming community at large, which, in my experience, is reflected in segments of Linux gaming communities. On the other hand, I just last night saw a bunch of people on Lemmy trying to help someone figure out how to get their new GPU to work, which was very much the opposite of toxic.
im with you man, FUCK ads, it was a major motivator moving from windows, as well as DRM and system level 0 anti-cheat.
you answered my second question but not in the way I intended, I meant to ask for more of a methodology like, do you just read the man pages? do you refer to AI? are you just full trial and error? does your work provide resources? Im asking because I generally want to see why its such an issue for people to find info, personally I use a mix of selfhosted AI and various forums and wikis. I wouldn't be supprised if some users are learning 100% through chatgpt or a single youtube channel.
Im experiencing much the same with the community it seems to be a 60-40 whether im going to find actual help or have someone just tell me to RTFM and the people who do care are absolutely kind and absurdly helpful. Your observation about the gaming focused linux community being slightly more on the toxic side is probably an apt assessment. and probably skews the initial proportion of 60-40 to the more to the toxic side where as it would otherwise be something like 80-20 helpful and toxic respectively.
Linux should work out of the box. Besides installing drivers no effort should be required. Especially with stuff like Bazzite which has all gaming stuff preinstalled.
This is a great and much needed video to show an actual user experience.
All I know is I finally migrated my gaming desktop to Linux 3 years ago as my last hold out system and the only windows machine I’ve had since 2009. I haven’t noticed anything in terms of reduction in performance. Not to mention the ease of use when compared to getting Debian running on my laptop in 2009.
But more importantly to me, when I click shutdown, my machine shuts down within 5 seconds. When I start up I’m not spammed a million times over with ads and bullshit. And when I update and reboot, my updates are done, no more update, reboot, update some more, reboot, etc.
Let’s say Linux performance is worse than windows (has not been my experience), I would take that and not have all the other bullshit.
they should buy a second ssd if they want to dual boot Linux
It's actually not necessary, I've been dual-booting on the same system drive for years without any issues at all.
The only thing that's strictly necessary in that case is knowing darn well what you're doing.
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Are these two rar files malware? (virustotal results)
Does anyone know if these two files are considered malware?
I see a lot of things in the behavior tab that seem suspicious (but then again, I have no idea, and am relatively new/dumb).
Here are the images of the virustotal results I am referring to:
Also, I did see there was an noticeable slowness to my pc after I extracted the rar files (I was in a VM).
Thank you.
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Should I have scanned the extracted folders rather than the rar file itself? (even though it shows network communications and mitre signatures?)
I ran an antivirus outside the VM and nothing was detected luckily. (I had already extracted the rar files, but just scanned the rar itself)
TLDR: I can't say for 100% sure, but there are multiple reasons to believe that this is malware.
Long version: I'm seeing multiple suspicious things here.
- The IPs being connected to are part of some hoster and have some abuse reports: abuseipdb.com/check-block/217.…
- The domain being resolved is qcloud[.]com, which belongs to Tencent Cloud and definitely not Microsoft.
- Other domains in memory like counter-strike[.]com[.]ua are very new and definitely sound fishy.
- A standalone version of 7zip is being run and extracts the created rar file with the password "infected". Real alarm bells here.
- A lot of the registry actions look like anti-debugging, which does not sound like something an Illustrator Plugin would do.
There are some suspicious things going on like the qcloud and counter-strike domains, as well as the 7zip extract being run.
I would probably get rid of it.
Malware or not, remember to update WinRAR
arstechnica.com/security/2025/…
High-severity WinRAR 0-day exploited for weeks by 2 groups
Exploits allow for persistent backdooring when targets open booby-trapped archive.Dan Goodin (Ars Technica)
OneXPlayer Super X: New AMD Strix Halo gaming handheld teased with convertible design
OneXPlayer Super X: New AMD Strix Halo gaming handheld teased with convertible design
The OneXPlayer Super X has been officially teased. Sticking with a similar design to the other X-series devices, it's a convertible gaming handheld but with the AMD Ryzen AI Max+ 395, which brings the powerful Radeon 8060S iGPU.Abid Ahsan Shanto (Notebookcheck)
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Are distros really different or is it more about preference?
I've been working and testing to switch my main PC (used for work like audio recording, music, and general multimedia) and have been playing with Ubuntu Studio on my laptop. Loving it so far but I keep seeing people talk about CachyOS, Bazzite, or the new Debian Trixie.
I'm having trouble finding what's really different about all these distros aside from how they look or slight changes in how they do things (I know Ubuntu Studio has a low latency kernel which seems important for what I need to do). Is there a big difference? Like, if I go with Ubuntu Studio am I gonna end up wiping everything and installing CachyOS or Bazzite or something in a month because it's better? Or are all these distros basically the same thing with a different look and feel and as long as I choose one that gets regular updates, it doesn't matter fundamentally?
I'm trying to grasp the Linux concept but being a Windows user my whole life I'm struggling to 'get it'. Instead of trying to understand in the contex of Windows or Mac, is a better comparison Apple/Android? Like iPhones would be similar to both Mac and Windows (you don't get to choose much) and Android would be Linux (I know it's built on it haha) and it's really just a bunch of different options to do the same thing?
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I’ve said it here before and I’ll continue to say it. All the Linux nerds (myself included) have strong opinions when it comes to distros or x vs Wayland, or flatpak vs repositories, blah blah blah.
But in the end - none of it matters. You could randomly eliminate all options except for one distro - and we’d happily pick that over windows. The trick is that you could make any distro like any other - it’s just that the distro did all the work for you. So pick the one that matches how you want to use your pc.
Maybe the only thing that’s not changeable is the philosophy behind the distro. Debian - older stuff for stability. Arch - bleeding edge rolling release. Fedora somewhere in the middle. You get the idea.
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Arch is also just becoming the standard gaming option.
A lot of gaming communities that are migrating over are flowing to the aur for their community tools.
A lot of gaming communities that are migrating over are flowing to the aur for their community tools.
Wasn't there malware found in the AUR just last week?
For Linux newbs, AUR is the Arch User Repository where anyone can post packages and scripts. It's highly recommended to NOT trust anything on there due to the risk of malware. If you don't use Arch and stick to your distro's application manager you don't have to worry about it
It appears to be a way of running containers in the terminal with the specific intent to have a certain distro image installed, run a program, and give it permission to interact with your system's home directory with an easy to launch icon.
It looks pretty darn handy, I'm going to give it a try this weekend
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It has been my experience that there is no “best distro“. It’s just a matter of which distro is best for you. there are distros geared for beginners, distros geared for media professionals, distros aimed at software developers,… And it all takes the experience of trying it out to see what works best for you in particular.
While all distro’s have the same underlying components, so to speak, different distro’s, are typically developed with different use cases in mind.
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The main difference has traditionally been the package manager and update schedule, though a distro might offer several options for the second one.
Relatively recently we got another differentiating feature with immutable distros, where updates don't happen with a package manager but often by downloading or building a complete new image with the newer versions.
Other than that distros mainly set the defaults for you, but you can always change that to work or look like another distro with enough effort.
Basically, don't worry about it and use what works for you
Ignore anyone claiming there is some massive performance difference between any distros. That's some misinformed bullshit.
The main things you need to understand are the layers:
1) Kernel
2) Libraries
3) Package Manager
4) UserSpace
The Kernel layer will be largely transparent for you as a beginner. If you want bleeding edge stuff, install a "Rolling Release" distro that updates this layer much more frequently than "LTS (long term support)" releases will, as their function is to remain stable for longer periods of time.
Libraries will also be transparent to you as a new user, and even as experts, we rarely need to mess with this layer unless building something specific, which you will not need to worry about. Do not let the Chaff start talking some bullshit about how you to prefer this or that in distros blah blah ...you're a new user. Ignore that noise.
Package Manager: something to consider as you will be interacting with this. RPM, Apt/Deb and pacman are the big three, and all are very mature and stable. They all perform similar basic functions, just in different ways. You'll have a preference in time, but any of them work well. It's not a huge thing you need to worry about, but you'll surely like one over another in time.
UserSpace: where all the fun stuff is. Stick with a distro that has a large community. The biggest choice in how you will interact with your machine as a desktop user is here in that you want to choose a Desktop Environment, or DE. Gnome and KDE are the big two in this arena, but there are many: Xfce, Cinnamon, Mate...etc. Id suggest starting with Gnome if you like a clean MacOS type interface, or KDE if you really like the more verbose sort of Windows experience. Both are fine choices, and you won't have problems with either. Again, ignore everyone telling you one is better than the other...they are not. It's a preference. Try them both, and go with one. You can easily swap later if you want, no big deal.
Lastly: don't go off and use Bl00pyGameRzX or whatever random distro the loudest asshole in a thread is telling you to use. Again, you're a new user, you need simple, stable, and a huge community to reference if you have issues.
I suggest Fedora for new users now after Ubuntu shat the bed and soiled their crown. After getting comfortable with things, maybe look into what the difference is between Fedora and Cachy, and if that's of any use to you. If not, whatever, just keep using what you like. Distro hopping is for aimless people who don't know what they're looking for, or how to identify. Use what YOU like, and keep using it as long as you like it. Ignore the hype machine telling you otherwise. That's the point.
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One correction to this:
The Arch package manager is Pacman, not AUR. AUR is the Arch User Repository and is definitely not stable 😀
Because people recommended it.
There were better options. It crashed or broke all the time. Still does.
It would never be a recommendation for new users from me. I tried every version since 4, so I am not new to its shittyness.
General rule of thumb for new users.
Doesn't like to tinker and non gamer. Fedora
Likes to thinker and non gamer endeavour
Doesn't like to tinker and gamer bazzite
Likes to tinker and gamer cachy
Arch at this point is no more unstable or prone to breaking then mint or any other distro barring like Debian. Cachy and endeavour with kde6 basically have solved the arch isn't for new users problem coming from Windows.
So really you just need to ask yourself. Do you want your defaults to include gaming utilities or do you want to have to install them yourself. If your going to game you can save yourself hours as a new user with bazzite or cachy since they come out of the box with a button for "I want to install all the gaming stuff" and your good to go.
If you don't game and just do basic work then you can go with fedora which will provide a great curated experience that basically just leaves you with a standard and reliable work PC.
Or endeavour which will drop you off right at the point of everything works, is reliable and ready for you to start learning. Even if you choose to never fiddle with anything, you still end up with a system that supports the widest possible amount of hardware and has one of the best user manuals of any distro family.
Seriously for as much as people claim you need a big community for refence material. Between cachy and arches wiki, you have a better source of information than any other option. It's absurd how useful it is.
Y'all really need to get off the Bazzite thing for new users.
Fedora for gaming is great and has zero issues.
Bazzite is no better than any other distro in this respect EXCEPT that it's immutable, and going to be a NIGHTMARE for somebody not yet familiar with how things work in a Linux system. It's edge cases upon edge cases, and the assumption by people pushing this idiocy is that they'll never need to know how a normal functioning Linux system works if they like it, which is an ignorant supposition.
Stop pushing this narrative to new users, you're just making it harder on them.
You mean opaque.
And you will definitely find out about libraries if you attempt to install anything.
Some packages will install in your home directory, others, for no apparent reason will spread themselves around the system in the area only available in administration mode. Good luck finding where it all went. The only way I can find is to look at the path in Synaptic, most package managers won't record it.
This...I don't understand what this is.
No distro managed by a package manager would be dropping files all over the place as you're suggesting, not would it require you to interact with or even know which libraries you have installed because it's all automatically handled by said package manager.
If you're installing out of band packages, you're talking about a different thing, and that's the package maintainer's fault, not the distro and their maintainers.
Grass is greener...Linux is a kernel with tools attached that distributions play with and present as they would as a distribution. Packaging (program management) is different throughout with all the distros loving their 'tool', or, methodology. Some distros present helpful scripts to get a thing done, or, look a way, or, whatever, and some do not.
Windows tells you, here, you can use this or do this and cannot do this or use that. Linux tells you to simply have at it and makes it all available for you to use or not to use. Windows sits you at the kiddie table whereas Linux gives you materials and tools.
Þe biggest difference is going to be in þe package manager. And even þen, it can be furþer generalized into rolling vs point releases. Software tends to be þe same, once installed.
Notable differences from þe common selection:
- Chimera Linux, which doesn't use systemd and uses a BSD userspace instead of GNU. Þis one's going to feel a lot different þan oþers
- Void, Artix, Alpine, and a few more niche oþers, which don't use systemd
- Þe immutable systems, like NixOS
Most Linux distributions are going to use þe same basic stack (all of þese use þe Linux kernel and so are "Linux"): systemd, GNU userspace and X or Wayland.
Distributions have some package manager, some default set-up, and selection of themes and desktop backgrounds þat give þem þeir flavor; but beyond þe package manager, init system (and in þe case of systemd, a whole bunch of oþer subsystems), and userspace, it's all superficial and common across distributions and can be swapped or installed on most distributions - often wiþout even a reboot. Þe userspace and init are not impossible to swap out for someþing else, but are generally quite hard (and harder for systemd) to replace, as is þe package manager.
Þe main decision, þen IMHO for new users is to decide wheþer þey want a rolling or point release (or an immutable distribution), and almost always for new users þe answer is "point release" since maintenance is usually lower, giving folks time to get used to Linux before facing þem wiþ some breaking software upgrade. NixOS has a notoriously comparatively high learning curve, as does GUIX; oþer immutable distros maybe not so, but none have yet achieved notoriety, and þe smaller þe community, þe less help you'll find online. Þis usually means some descendent of Redhat or Debian, like Mint, which is why even people who don't use Mint þemselves end up recommending it as a starter.
In terms of how you interact with it day to day, no. And that's because the Distro in that sense matters less than the desktop environment. Since DEs are fundamentally distro agnostic, most distros give a person the option for multiple choices in that regard, so it doesn't really matter if you're using Ubuntu, Arch, Fedora, etc.... what matters from a usage perspective is if you're using KDE, or Gnome, or XFCE, etc...
Under the hood there's a lot of differences in how each one chooses to do things, but I wouldn't call one of them better or worse than any other and for the most part can be ignored.
My advice would be narrow it down to one choice; and that's your package manager. That's really where most of the difference lies. Find the one that you find easiest to use (Apt, Pacman/Pamac, DNF, Zypper) and that's where you land until you're comfortable.
Noob opinion: they're all the same, you're just choosing from the minor differences in the quirks one has over another and it would be easy enough to work around those if you were motivated to.
The real difference is the DE, how quickly updates are pushed, good GUI on a package manager and if it is immutable or not.
For noobs like me it also helps if it has a lot of users so I can find forum posts about my specific problem. Vetrans keep saying that online documentation is enough, but I wouldn't even know where to start with applying generic instructions to my installation (e.g. how is a wiki going to be able to tell me that my low framerates in Street Fighter 6 are because of split lock protections on my CPU). How would I diagnose the problem to know where to look? This is the major appeal of Debian based systems.
A Linux distribution is just the Linux kernel distributed with various other pieces of software that make it usable. Often times, there are multiple software projects that aim achieve the same goal by going in different paths. These are packaged together by the distro maintainers who mostly do this out of passion.
Different distros prioritize different aspects of the software they package and they do this in different ways. To make the best choice for you, it is best to try and understand what each distro aims to do. Here are a few examples out my head:
- Debian is a traditional distribution that aims to keep the system stable for a few years. They do backport security patches, but slow rollout of feature updates is a deal-breaker for some people (like me).
- CachyOS (based on Arch Linux) compiles it's packages utilizing newest CPU instructions which may lead to slight performance gain on newer hardware. They also ship some kernel patches optimizing it for gaming use cases.
- Bazzite is based on an atomic/immutable version of Fedora. The aim here is to provide a system that makes it very hard for users to mess it up, using containerization technologies. It also means that installing packages in the traditional way is not very feasible or recommended. You are supposed to install packages without root access and using technologies like flatpak. It also includes some gaming specific kernel patches similar to CachyOS, but not as many.
Sure, but it is just Debian with their crap bolted on.
The last two times I installed Ubuntu somewhat recently, it was broken at the install. I fixed it, but it shouldn't be that way. The hardware was nothing exotic or interesting either.
It has always been troublesome.
Ultimately my choice of distro came down to what packages are available under the package managers.
I found a couple of packages only under the AUR so I go Arch.
But what I want from Linux, and what makes it Linux to me is the DE. So I could use Fedora Gnome or EndeavourOS gnome and just go with whichever is best for my use case.
As you see, there are 1000 different opinions, heh.
My take is it’s about user patterns.
Every distro has different maintenance expectations, different tolerance for bugs and keeping stuff up to date and working. That’s the flavor difference: it’s all the same packages just served to you a different way.
As an example, Arch Linux has an expectation for the user to pay attention to maintenance. Read their excellent wiki. Update frequently, and pay attention to errors and warnings when you do. There is one version of Python, so update your stuff to work with out. The “reward” for being so hands on is stuff getting automatically fixed quickly.
CachyOS is just a preconfigured version of this, with presets and experimental features tailored for gaming. But it’s largely not divergent from the underlying Arch system: you could switch from an arch install to CachyOS packages with zero fuss.
Contrast with Ubuntu. It is meant to be more “hands off” with staged and delayed updates. There are many versions of Python present in the same system, so old stuff works without changes. But the consequence is you may have to live with certain problems you run into, or risk breaking your system trying to fix them.
Fedora is somewhere in between, with the addition of an emphasis on free software. And a consequence of that is, for instance, no first party support for Nvidia. Bazzite builds on top of that by expensively modifying it into a stable platform for gaming, but you’re also dependent on a relatively small group of maintainers.
So I guess one question is how involved with your computer do you want to be?
The main differences are:
- package management (how you install new programs)
- release model (fixed vs rolling)
- default desktop environments (the GUI / look and feel)
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Workflows are different, configuration files can be different, and package names (not just management) can be different.
Additionally, release cadence (how fast you get new stuff, even when considering fixed releases), stability, performance (how were the packages compiled), and custom patches that aren't part of the original code (*shakes fist angrily at Manjaro*)
I don't like how the manjaro team does it specifically. A lot of the time i've seen packages break in Manjaro that work fine in Arch, then Manjaro users come into Arch forums acting like its an Arch problem when it isn't.
Also, their driver install helper causes more problems than it solves, which was especially highlighted in the transition to open source official nvidia drivers. Couldn't install the open source ones for the longest time, and couldn't install the right ones from the repo with pacman directly. Caused some major issues for a friend I was helping.
Helped him switch to proper Arch and all the issues went away.
Valve on the other hand puts extreme effort into maintaining stability. I use it regularly and have zero issues, though I use it as-is out of the box.
Agreed.
Though if you get off the beaten path, you get things like system supervisor, system compiler, C library, and core utils.
But most Linux distros are systemd, GCC, Glibc, and GNU utils. Which brings us back to your list.
It's the difference between Windows 11, Windows 11 Pro, Windows 11 for Enterprise, and Windows Server 2025.
There are differences, but not dramatic differences. Some are just better tuned to certain users than others.
I don’t think there is really too much difference either. Mainly the package manager is the main difference I guess. There are a lot of other differences but if you don’t really care about it then it doesn’t really matter.
The desktop environment makes a much bigger difference than the distro.
First thing to consider is they all use the same Desktop Environments.
Unlike Windows, in Linux the "graphic" is completely separated from the operating system, any DE can be uses on any distro, so trying different distros that come with the same DE, might make you think there's very little difference (at first look).
Second, almost all distros are derivatives, that contributes to make them feel similar. The original ones are just a bunch: Debian, Red Hat, Slackware, SuSe, Arch, Gentoo, everything else is based either on one of those or on another derivative, if your curious you can have a look at this graph: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Lin…
So for example, if you take Ubuntu and Mint, they might look similar because Mint is based on Ubuntu.
If you want to see the real differences, you need to look at the original ones, the core differences are: the way software is packaged and managed, and the "philosophy" behind the way the system is overall administered, maintained and released.
Derivatives add differences to the user experience, they main reason they're created is someone is not completely happy with the way a distro does things and they create one the meets their needs, for example, Debian is improved dramatically on the user experience lately, but many years ago was quite arduous to setup and use for non-experts, so Ubuntu was born.
Now to answer you question
as long as I choose one that gets regular updates, it doesn’t matter fundamentally?
It does matter, tho it's not as much world-changing as some people seem to think (especially when it comes to gaming).
The most important things are support for your hardware and easy of administration/use. Most distros will recognize and setup your hardware out of the box, but some might require tinkering or extra steps. Some distros automate almost everything so the user doesn't need to think about it, others require more knowledge and more manual intervention, you have a much finer control of your system this way at the expense of some user friendliness, it's up to you to decide what you prefer.
Then it comes the Desktop Environment, different DEs do things differently, which one to choose is totally personal preference.
As for software, unless you go after some niche obscure distro, you shouldn't have problems finding it in the distro repositories. For edge cases you can always use Flatpaks or AppImages.
The better comparison is that distros are the operating systems (like "windows", "macos", and "android"), while "linux" is the kernel under the hood that end users likely never interact with (like "NT", "XNU", and..."linux").
A distro represents an intended user experience. If you want a distro that has an intended user experience that is similar to windows, go with Mint or OpenSUSE. If your desired experience is like the SteamDeck, install bazzite (with an AMD GPU ideally). If that's all you care to know, then that's all you need to know; go use your new system how you would any other.
But if you want to dig deeper, yeah, the fact that all the distros are based on linux (and more importantly, are posix compatible) means that a lot of the software is portable across distros. But that doesn't mean your experience on all distros will be the same. Different distros organize their filesystems differently, they might ship with different versions of core utilities based on the stability testing they've done, and they likely offer varying means of installing and managing new packages.
The tl;dr is, go use one distro, and then later try doing the same stuff in a different distro, and inevitably at some point you'll go "oh, this didn't work exactly how I expected because the other distro I'm used to handles this differently". That's the difference.
You're on the right track. Linux technically refers to the kernel, the low-level core of the operating system that everything else interacts with and is built on top of. Distros are just collections of components that have been standardized by some group or company.
Linux Mint is heavily customized Ubuntu with a different DE and all of Connonical's stuff removed. Nobara is a gaming-focused distro built on Fedora with a bunch of kernel modifications and pre-installed software to help games run better. CatchyOS is just Arch but with a really friendly installer that allows less advanced users to still enjoy many of the heavy customizations and cutting-edge software of Arch, etc etc.
Think of it like an engine. You can use the same engine in a bunch of different vehicles. You can also make modifications to the engine itself, but it will still essentially be the same engine.
The #1 rule for new Linux users, especially ones who aren't interested in becoming power users or tinkering with their OS, is if you're happy with your distro, stick with it.
There's no objective "correct" distro. The best distro for you is the distro that works and you feel comfortable with.
Lots of new users become worried that they are missing out on some major improvement in their experience of Linux or feel like they picked the "wrong" distro because some random user dissed it. Don't pay attention to that, if your distro does everything you need it to do and you enjoy using it, there's no reason to go looking for something better.
Now of course, there's nothing wrong with checking out other distros, and if you are somebody who likes to tinker with your setup and doesn't mind risking breaking things sometimes, then by all means, distro hop away. Almost all distros have a "live boot" option, which allows you to test the OS off of a flash drive without having to install it on your computer. It's a great way to quickly get the look and feel for a new distro without having to commit.
And of course, there are tons of Linux YouTubers who do reviews of distros, so you can watch those to also get an idea of the different options out there.
Because of the nature of FOSS and the linux ecosystem, you can make most distros look and feel just like any other, so that's always an option too.
This helps a lot, thank you. I've been feeling overwhelmed about making sure I pick the best distro and there's a lot of info bombardment. Additionally, I love this stuff so I know in a couple months there's a good chance I'll want to use another distro and I don't want to wipe everything again haha.
I use my PC for work, freelance audio production, voiceover, music, etc. I've been testing Ubuntu Studio on my laptop and it seems to be going ok so far (learning curve and lack of software aside) but I keep seeing people shoot down Ubuntu. Everyone seems to be talking about Bazzite and CachyOS but honestly I'm getting the impression they don't use Linux for much more than just gaming.
It all feels a little gate-keepy in ways and I got overwhelmed haha. Think I'll just keep chipping away with Ubuntu Studio and see if it'll do the trick for my main PC. Thanks again.
I used Ubuntu Studio many years ago when I was going through an electronica phase lol. It worked fine for me.
Don't sweat it, there will always be the hot new distros on the block. Right now it's Bazzite, CatchyOS, and NixOS, back in the day there was Garuda, Arco Linux, Bunsen, MX Linux, and a ton of others. Some are still around, some are long gone. Doesn't mean they are bad distros, many of them are/were great, but don't choose a distro just because everybody is talking about it.
Plus, as you get more experience with Linux, the differences matter less and less. There are only a handful of package managers, and unless you have some very specific technical requirements, they all do the same thing and work the same way.
"apt install firefox" becomes "yum install firefox", or "pacman -S firefox" it's all pretty much the same under the hood.
And if you use KDE Plasma on different distros, the Discover store works the same across distros, same with any other GUI package installer.
If you keep getting better and get into home lab building or just have several different computers, you might end up using a bunch or distros at the same time on different machines.
Right now across all my physical computers and virtual machines in my home lab, I currently have 9 different distros installed on various machines. Different distros for different purposes.
My general #JustWorks laptops and VMs use Linux Mint, my hardcore gaming rig uses Nobara, my test junker laptops run Debian 13, Void Linux, and Arch for testing random software and messing around. For my Docker containers, I run Debian 12 as the base, for my Minecraft server, Ubuntu Server, my Steam Deck is SteamOS which is just Valve's heavily modified spin of Arch, and my main lab's Type-1 hypervisor is XCP-ng, which is basically Fedora under the hood.
IMO, coming from the systems administration side of Linux, the most significant difference was package management and availability.
RedHat and clones were very conservative and focused on services like web, database, etc. With IBM purchasing RHEL, many switched to Ubuntu. Ubuntu is also favored by devs because the packages were more up to date.
Hi, request for comment: how do you feel about GNU guix? Is this the future of package management we wanted?
I've used RedHat and Ubuntu and Arch primarily because of the package ecosystem, and security is definitely major concern for most sysadmins (I am not one).
Is guix going to be the future? Thanks
As someone completely new and stupid it feels like the desktop environment is the only difference I will ever notice. I was just about to move to bazzite and poke around until I realised the example and what I was picturing were just gnome.
At least I know im stupid.
Really they all work the same as long as they're based on the same OS. I've done a lot of distro hopping and the only real difference I've seen is the desktop environment, package managers(sometimes), and pre-installed applications.
Even then, all of these can be changed. I would suggest picking a distro that best suits your needs by default and then add what you need from there.
I personally have been really happy with Linux Mint.
EnteAuth (and a bunch of other FOSS) take Microsoft's "free" money
cross-posted from: lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/51040952
I'm moving away from using products by big tech and I recently started using EnteAuth for 2FA. Today I got an email from them saying that they received money as part of GitHub's secure open source fund. Maybe I'm just being paranoid but I do not like this at all. Microsoft is not altruistic I don't care what anyone says. There has to be an ulterior motive for this. With even the recent news that github won't be so independent anymore and they're getting folded into the Microsoft umbrella this has me worried. But let's be real github was never independent just look at copilot being forced down everyone's throat. That's why I personally stopped using it.
According to the fund
Throughout this program, each project receives $10,000 USD via GitHub Sponsors (which breaks down to $6,000 USD during the sprint and $2,000 USD at 6- and 12-month security check-ins). Projects are also invited to a new security focused community, and office hours with the GitHub Security Lab, that they can take advantage of during the full 12 months. They also receive security resources to immediately implement in their project and Azure credits for cloud infrastructure.
Those sponsors include
Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, American Express, Chainguard, Datadog, Herodevs, Kraken, Mayfield, Microsoft, Shopify, Stripe, Superbloom, Vercel, Zerodha, 1Password
Projects that are part of this even include nodejs, nvm, log4j, JUnit, and Matplotlib. Taking cybersecurity seriously is great but this just seems like a way to sucker them into their ecosystem to get them dependent on their products. Like I said maybe I'm being paranoid but I wouldn't be surprise when Microsoft suddenly buys these projects and we lose what made them so great.
Securing the supply chain at scale: Starting with 71 important open source projects - The GitHub Blog
Learn how the GitHub Secure Open Source Fund helped 71 open source projects significantly improve their security posture.Kevin Crosby (The GitHub Blog)
Technology reshared this.
You may as well just stop using computers all together, bud 🤣
I don't mean to ruin your world view, but there are no ways to run anything you want to run by focusing on "altruistic companies", however you may subjectively define that.
Look, you're focusing on the wrong thing here. Maybe you didn't know this, but the massive majority of FOSS projects get funded by companies - either for consulting, feature bounties, IC development - and is a main driving force for the ecosystem.
Many in this ecosystem would even tell you that every single project is massively UNDERfunded by said companies, and they should kick in more to help keep these projects secure and in good standing. They make billions and billions of dollars off people's work, and it surely seems they should kick some of that back to the projects.
Whatever Microsoft's involvement is here, it's not going to be changing the direction of any of the projects mentioned. If for some reason something untoward starts happening with any project: boom, fork and new community. It's that simple.
In short, these people getting funding for their work is a good thing. If you take issue with who is providing that money, you're going to be digging a deep, deep hole in your research, and if you're running down the dep chain, you'll find out that all of the things you use have some funding by companies like Microsoft, Apple, Google, Facebook, IBM, Red Hat, Amazon, Alibaba, Halliburton, Qualcomm...I could keep going on and on.
but there are no ways to run anything you want to run by focusing on "altruistic companies", however you may subjectively define that.
I think you misunderstood OP. their complaint is not that these projects should search an altruistic donor... but that Microsoft is suspicious in doing this, because arguably they rarely have good intentions.
Whatever Microsoft's involvement is here, it's not going to be changing the direction of any of the projects mentioned.
let's hope so
If for some reason something untoward starts happening with any project: boom, fork and new community. It's that simple.
easier said than done.
In short, these people getting funding for their work is a good thing.
I think OP (and me too) is worried about the terms. like, can these projects abandon github without repercussions? can they start using another code forge in parallel?
Uhhh, repercussions like what?
sudden closure of donated azure services without prior notification and time to move off.
having to pay back some of the money.
the project planning with the promised donations as a given (they don't get all of it upfront, but as they get the most of it it's actually fair) and microsoft either using it as leverage or just carelessly terminating the contract to save money.
in extreme case banning the project from microsoft owned services, including github.
any of that in decreasing order of probability if implementation is different from expected (like not baking in specific security tools to the project) and the parties cannot agree on a solution.
Uhhh, repercussions like what?
sudden closure of donated azure services without prior notification and time to move off.
having to pay back some of the money.
the project planning with the promised donations as a given (they don't get all of it upfront, but as they get the most of it it's actually fair) and microsoft either using it as leverage or just carelessly terminating the contract to save money.
in extreme case banning the project from microsoft owned services, including github.
any of that in decreasing order of probability if implementation is different from expected (like not baking in specific security tools to the project) and the parties cannot agree on a solution.
oh and I must also live in texas, right?
I wouldn't even recognize their voice or face.
In terms of the open source community Microsoft has been significantly less sketchy than usual for about a decade now. For those of us that are old enough to remember the halloween files it's hard to let go of that paranoia, particularly with the sketchy shit MS has been doing with their proprietary stuff lately, but near as I can tell they've been above board on their open source stuff.
I wouldn't go so far as to say blindly trust them at this point, but I wouldn't just assume with no evidence at all that there has to be something nefarious going on either.
Whether it's good or bad is not determined by the fact that it's corporate money, but how that money impacts development, the devil's in the details, not just in a company donating lots of money.
Open source in general is very dependent on corporate sponsors. The linux kernel wouldn't exist had companies not invested in it.
I'm not knowledgeable enough to assess the potential pitfalls here, so I will be cautious but not paranoid, and continue to pay attention to discussions on how FOSS projects are run 🤷♂️
Darkassassin07
in reply to j_roby • • •SamuelRJankis
in reply to j_roby • • •I would believe when people think about the word ignorant they think about MAGA and those people seem pretty damn miserable.
Sure some would even say they're happy but their actions certainly don't look like someone that is anything close to happy.
impudentmortal
in reply to j_roby • • •I'd argue people who lack critical thinking skills are more likely to be scared and/or angry than they are to be happy.
They're told that people like immigrants, the LGBT community, the poor etc are trying to take valuable resources away and force their culture/agenda. That these groups are dangerous, inferior, and deserve harsher treatment.
They're told that we need to give up personal liberties in the name of security. That sites requiring ID to confirm your age is a good thing to protect the children.
They're told that climate change is a hoax created by liberals to take away their right to use gas cars and funnel money into renewable energy.
I'm sure there are other talking points but I got tired just thinking about it.
It's all equally exhausting if you ask me.
eldavi
in reply to impudentmortal • • •all this is true, and i want to add they're also told that there are people that can fix things for them if they just believe in them and give them whatever they need to return to the "good old days"; in the united states; this is always a republican leader.
i think that this gives them hope for a brighter future and this hope makes them seem happier than others. they're fooled into having faith that things will eventually get better, so long as they keep showing up to vote for their "protector" (and they VERY MUCH reliably do) or else someone else with take charge who will then let those evil lgbt, poor, immigrants, etc. destroy the country. in the united states this someone else is always a democratic leader.
liberals have to find their own source of hope and; in the united states; most place it upon a democratic leader, but liberals see their leader less as a protector and more like a stop-gap or as someone who is a lesser evil. it doesn't matter than the democratic leader is virtually the same as the republican leader, it only matters that they're more socially progressive than the republican leader; even if only by a hair.
this means that the regressive policies that both the democratic and republican leaders share invariably bites a person in the ass where it either reinforces a conservative's faith in a protector or it disillusions a liberal. the liberal then, either rebuilds their broken sense of hope and invests it again into a new democratic leader or checks out of the system to become either a doomer and/or a non-voter.
wheezy
in reply to impudentmortal • • •I think if you lack critical thinking skills but have all your material needs met, have a non alienating job that is satisfying, and aren't constantly seeking answers for why your life sucks (that the media loves to provide in the form of lies), you're probably going to be pretty happy.
I guess my point is that it's not necessarily the lack of critical thinking alone. It's the combination of that with people's material circumstances.
Basically I'm just describing that I see it through a lense of dialectical materialism.
It's why I want racist or homophobic idiots to also have free universal healthcare, education, and a fulfilling job. Because I don't think you can solely "educate" away the conditions that lead people to look for answers to their poor conditions. Answers that Twitter Nazis and media outlets are happy to fill with xenophobia and bigotry.
White working class people definitely still have privileges and advantages. But you can't educate away their feelings of "well, my parents owned a house at 19 and lived off a single salary. I'm driving for Uber and have 3 roommates". And the bigotries are there to offer them reasons for why it's not their own failure and (most importantly) why it's not the failures of capitalism.
svrem
in reply to j_roby • • •☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆
in reply to j_roby • • •Bucky
in reply to j_roby • • •jimp
in reply to j_roby • • •