How have others gotten friends/family to make the switch? I’ve been doing a cleanup of my digital life over the last year or so and am trying to move to using more privacy friendly alternatives where possible....
There’s a balance between principles and practicality and for a lot of people it just hasn’t tipped yet. I’m kind of in that boat myself.
On principle, I’d like to eliminate Google from my life entirely.
In practice, there is no good alternative to Google Maps. I’ve tried a bunch of OSM-based apps and they’re just not there yet. So I use Google Maps. Not happy about it, but I still use it.
In what way is macOS more closed than Windows? The kernel is open source, the app store and cloud stuff is entirely optional, and it runs most Unix-y stuff natively.
Having used both, I don’t find WSL comparable to macOS’s native unix shell. Aside from the bloat of it, integration with the rest of the OS is troublesome on Windows, and WSL apps are second-class citizens. On macOS, there is no “rest of the OS” because the unix shell is fundamental. It’s not running in a virtual environment like WSL; it is the native environment.
the WSL 2 architecture uses virtualized networking components, which means that WSL 2 will behave similarly to a virtual machine – WSL 2 distributions will have a different IP address than the host machine (Windows OS).
As of right now WSL 2 does not include serial support, or USB device support
If you have no open file handles to Windows processes, the WSL VM will automatically be shut down. This means if you are using it as a web server, SSH into it to run your server and then exit, the VM could shut down because it is detecting that users are finished using it and will clean up its resources.
WSL is a great addition to Windows, but it’s still kind of a band-aid.
I disagree with the characterization of Homebrew as a “virtual environment”. It installs binaries and libraries in its own directory and by default adds those directories to your PATH. This makes them first-class entities on macOS. Unlike with WSL, there is no secondary kernel and no hypervisor. Everything runs natively within the macOS environment. There’s no bridge, no virtualizer, not even sandboxing with Homebrew or MacPorts. Homebrew and MacPorts do not install “Linux” software; they install Mac software.
As a real-world example, I can install newer versions of standard tools like openssl and kerberos5 via MacPorts or Homebrew, and native Mac apps that rely on those pick them up seamlessly. I don’t think that is realistic with WSL, if even possible.
I haven’t re-evaluated a lot of development stuff since the release of WSL2, so perhaps things are smoother now, but in WSL1 I found there to be a big disconnect between e.g. a Windows-native installation of Spyder and a WSL-based Python environment. If there is a way to set that up, rather than installing Spyder within WSL and wrestling with X11 to run it as a second-class GUI, I’d love to hear it.
As the title says, I have been using Proton Unlimited for almost a year; I mainly use Proton Pass, VPN and mail. Mail and Pass are pretty good. However, proton VPN is hit and miss because of the constant loading, slow and unreliable servers....
I’m also interested in hearing Proton users’ experience. On paper it looks like an okay deal, but you could get a similar suite of services from Posteo + iDrive + Mullvad + BitWarden for cheaper and not end up locked into an “ecosystem”.
However, there is legitimate value in combining email and drive space. Posteo only gives you 2GB for email, and their upgrades are rather expensive.
Also, Mullvad might not be equivalent since they axed the port forwarding feature a while back, making BitTorrent only kind-of usable (incoming connections will not work).
Definitely not the start of the joke, but I couldn’t tell you where it did start. I think it long predates the internet. I would guess that it goes back to cultural conflict between British and French aristocracy in centuries past, but at this point I think it’s very far removed from the origins.
In the US, I think using France as the butt of random jokes got a boost during George W. Bush’s presidency because France publicly opposed the US’s invasion of Iraq, which caused some absurd and petty reactions from US politicians, like renaming “French fries” to “freedom fries”.
I have no idea why Disney decided to change that line. Perhaps it has more to do with the suggestion of interracial partnerships than with France specifically? Either way, Jesus Christ, Disney…
Debian includes ffmpeg, for example, in the main stable repo. Given Debian’s reputation, I would think they are including these security patches in a timely manner, though I’m not entirely sure how to compare specific patches to verify this.
Of course, everything changes when you are selling support contracts. Canonical and Red Hat are the big two for enterprise because they provide support.
When I was last running Ubuntu on desktop, I signed up for an account and enabled these extra security updates. Yeah, it’s “free”, but it requires jumping through hoops. Requiring an account to get patches is the kind of user-hostile design pattern I expect from Apple or Google, but not in the desktop Linux world.
What are your ‘defaults’ for your desktop Linux installations, especially when they deviate from your distros defaults? What are your reasons for this deviations?...
Key points are BTRFS with Snapper, PipeWire, newer kernels and some other niceties from backports, proprietary drivers/codecs by default, VirtualBox support (which I’ve personally had huge problems with in the past on multiple distros). They also mention font tweaks, but I haven’t done side-by-side comparisons, so I’m not sure exactly what that means.
Edit: shoutout to Spiral Linux creator @sb56637 , who posted a few illuminating comments on this older thread: lemmy.ca/post/6855079 (if there’s a way to link to posts in an instance-agnostic way on Lemmy, please let me know!)
To clarify, this is my first time using Spiral Linux. My experience regarding Nvidia drivers is across several different distros (most recently Ubuntu LTS and OpenSuse Tumbleweed). I have never had a seamless experience. Often the initial driver installation works, but CUDA and related tools are finicky. Sometimes a kernel update breaks everything. Sometimes it doesn’t play nice with other kernel extensions.
The Debian version of the drivers didn’t set up Secure Boot properly. Instead, I rolled back and used the generic Nvidia .run installer, which worked fine. Not seamless, obviously, but not really worse than my experience on other distros. In the future I will always just use the generic installers from Nvidia.
Point is, with BTRFS you can just try anything without fear. I’m not going to worry about installing kernel updates from now on, or driver updates, or anything, because if anything goes wrong, it’s no big deal.
I don’t think I will ever go back to a filesystem without snapshot support. BTRFS with Snapper is just so damn cool. It’s an absolute lifesaver when working with Nvidia drivers because if you breathe on your system wrong it will fail to boot. Kernel updates and driver updates are a harrowing experience with Nvidia, but snapper is like an IRL cheat code.
OpenSuse has this by default, but I’m back to good ol’ Debian now. This and PipeWire are the main reasons I installed Debian via Spiral Linux instead of the stock Debian installer. Every time I install a new package with apt, it automatically created pre and post snapshots. Absolutely thrilled with the results so far. Saved me a few hours already, after yet another failed Nvidia installation attempt.
How does this coverage hold up? It was a fun read from back in my highschool days, when I was still five years from trying Linux on my own AMD Thunderbird 1Ghz. It wasn’t until 2008 that I tried again and it stuck.
I just see pirating software as supporting a company I hate instead of supporting an open source project I like
Yes!
Adobe owes a huge part of their success to piracy. It made it impossible for smaller companies to get a foothold back in the 90s because everyone just pirated Photoshop. It never would have become so entrenched (or grown so exploitative in licensing) if people had instead used cheaper/free alternatives.
It seems like all the other markdown stuff works, but we’re missing ^superscript^ and subscript in connect. As a frequent user of footnotes,^1^ I would greatly appreciate support for these tags....
I’m seeing it working correctly on web now on two different instances, so…I dunno, guess I’m crazy? I was sure it wasn’t working yesterday. I actually tried to use it in a comment just a few days ago and gave up.
I know that this is possible, but I’ve never actually heard of it being done on streaming sites. I’ve only heard of it with e.g. prerelease copies of movies sent to critics or something like that.
About
Dubai Porta Potty is a slang term for a woman who purportedly allows Dubai billionaires to defecate into her mouth for large sums of money. In late April 2022, an NSFW and NSFL video of a man defecating into a woman’s mouth began trending on TikTok and Twitter, generating discussions, memes and reaction videos referencing the viral video. According to the rumored backstory, the clip depicts a billionaire committing the act on a prostitute. Discussion of the video was shared under the hashtag #DubaiPortaPotty.
Origin
Rumors of models agreeing to perform deeply scatological and fetishistic sex acts in exchange for large sums of money have appeared online since roughly 2015. Mentions of “Dubai Porta Potty” have appeared as early as December 29th, 2015, on 4chan.[2] The blog “TagTheSponsor” operated from 2015 to 2019, and the runner would pretend to be a Dubai billionaire offering women money in exchange for sex, sometimes including scatological sex acts, and post the conversations.[3] On April 24th, 2019, Redditor Dhall15 posted a Starter Pack meme about women returning from Dubai smelling poorly (shown below).
I’d also like to point out that mpv has youtube-dl built-in (and can also use the cooler fork, yt-dlp). You can open YouTube links directly in mpv and they will play with no bullshit. It can even pull 4K streams.
There are browser plugins that let you open links directly in external programs like mpv, although they are a bit of a hassle to set up (especially if you are on Ubuntu with their godforsaken Snaps).
I’m about to jump from Ubuntu back to good ol’ Debian. I was planning on testing, but I’ve heard a few times recently that people are running unstable for day-to-day desktop use. Is there any particular reason you went with unstable instead of testing? Any issues so far?
Isn’t that just asking for trouble? From the Real-Debrid TOS:
The User acknowledges not to use our service to download copyright infringement digital files punishable by a suspension of his account and reporting to competent organizations and authorities
Logging policy is not great:
Files links that Users download are stored in a database for legal concerns and our internal use. All saved links are erased within 1 month for security reasons and service needs. However all requests made on our site are stored for 1 year, the legal retention period.
Doesn’t look like you can sign up anonymously (unless you consider bitcoin and email anonymous, which they’re generally not).
Switching to more privacy friendly alternatives
How have others gotten friends/family to make the switch? I’ve been doing a cleanup of my digital life over the last year or so and am trying to move to using more privacy friendly alternatives where possible....
8-25-23 www.thefarside.com (lemm.ee)
Today GNU/Linux is 32 years old (lemmy.ml)
Happy birthday 🎊🎉 GNU/Linux....
Yeah, very sorry that this app is Windows only, would love to switch to Mac (feddit.de)
Stolen from Deltachat
Is Proton Unlimited Worth renewing?
As the title says, I have been using Proton Unlimited for almost a year; I mainly use Proton Pass, VPN and mail. Mail and Pass are pretty good. However, proton VPN is hit and miss because of the constant loading, slow and unreliable servers....
fr*nce (feddit.de)
Yes, Ubuntu Is Withholding Security Patches for Some Software (www.flu0r1ne.net)
Your chosen desktop Linux defaults?
What are your ‘defaults’ for your desktop Linux installations, especially when they deviate from your distros defaults? What are your reasons for this deviations?...
[Old 1997 story] The Greatest OS That (N)ever Was (www.wired.com)
How does this coverage hold up? It was a fun read from back in my highschool days, when I was still five years from trying Linux on my own AMD Thunderbird 1Ghz. It wasn’t until 2008 that I tried again and it stuck.
Do you utilize a dedicated AV like Bitdefender when sailing? Or do you still trust Windows Defender to take care of the higher risk while doing this?
What the title says, and that’s pretty much it. Do you or don’t you?
Superscript and subscript
It seems like all the other markdown stuff works, but we’re missing ^superscript^ and subscript in connect. As a frequent user of footnotes,^1^ I would greatly appreciate support for these tags....
Recording Spotify to your DAW, can this get your account banned?
Does Spotify have a way to see if your computer is recording with your DAC’s stereo mix? And if so, is there a way around it?
New Instagram logo just dropped (feddit.de)
PSA To people watching YouTube with AdBlockers
You might have noticed that even on Firefox (depending on your lists) YouTube may detect uBlock Origin on Firefox now...
Ubuntu 23.10 is out (ubuntu.com)
Release notes:...
Pirates, all of a sudden, discussing PAID options!!? How did we regress that far !? (www.reddit.com)