Thunderbird is a K-9 reskin. They’re the same app. People pick based on what icon and app name they want I guess.

How’s the firmware support/availability? For things like graphics tablets, graphics drivers, etc?

I don’t think OpenBSD has binary compat with Linux but most Linux software should just need a recompile for BSDs—I’m discouraged from porting given that when it’s not a simple recompile I’d have much less idea what to do.

The reasons people use Linux are for qualities other than the ones affected by AI use. AI use has implications for code quality, correctness, and security. But none of those are why people use Linux. People use Linux over BSD or other Unixes because Linux supports the most hardware, has the biggest software ecosystem, and being a monolithic kernel is much easier to get up and running with lots of hardware without needing to install separate drivers. Those qualities still need to be addressed by BSDs or whatever alternatives before people will start migrating from Linux.

I say this as someone who regularly uses and enjoys an OpenBSD machine. I couldn’t use it as my main machine because it just doesn’t have the same software availability and plug-and-use hardware support as Linux. Porting software to a new target is not a trivial task for most users. I package a few things for the AUR and that’s much easier as the software already supports x86_64 Linux; I just have to write a script to install it. I think OpenBSD is a nice OS but I highly doubt Linux users will migrate any time soon. Think about how many people were clinging onto X11 because Wayland didn’t support their super specific workflow. And a migration to an entirely different OS would be worse.

I know about Tailscale. I don’t use it because I want my VPS to be exposed to the internet; some of my services are supposed to be public. And those that aren’t, have their own authentication systems that are adequately secure for their purposes. I just don’t need Tailscale so I’ve not bothered with the setup.

I’ve had my VPS exposed to the internet for a while and never been pwned. No professional experience. Use SSH keys, not password authentication. Use FDE if physical access is in your threat model. Use a firewall to prevent connection on internal-only ports.

Vaultwarden will store your passwords encrypted (obviously) so even if your database does get stolen, the attacker shouldn’t be able to read your passwords without your master password.

It’s great. I also self-host my own Forgejo (that’s the software Codeberg runs on) instance for private repos, to avoid using up space on Codeberg’s servers.

Main problem is the lack of federation, leading to splintering across Codeberg/GitLab/sourcehut/self-hosted forges. I know there’s Radicle, and Forgejo is working on ActivityPub integration, but it’s slow-moving to get what should be inherently federated by design (git) to actually be federated. In practice you need accounts on a dozen different websites if you want to regularly contribute to foss.

Don’t worry, the models already spit out poor code quality.

Without knowing anything about your students, it’s hard to say. If I were the student I’d much prefer to be taught C, but that’s because I have an existing interest in computers and a desire to develop systems programming skills. I wouldn’t like to teach JS to anyone because it’s a bad language and I don’t want students to go away making more web 3 slop but if they actively are interested in making web 3 slop that’d be a case for teaching JS. I’m of the pedagogical school of teaching students what they are actually interested in learning. They might not know enough about programming to know which language they want to learn off the bat, but maybe ask them what sort of software they’re interested in making. If they want to make websites, you might want to teach them something like Python with Flask, as something less bad than JS as well as easy enough to learn.

Imo C is a good teaching language as it teaches you a lot about how computers work, as well as the fact that nearly everything runs on C. It is “harder” though, and imo is also for students who are actually interested.

If you want something more featureful, OpenRC is decent.

I usually use runit, which is much more lightweight, which I like.

You can try out distros with different inits in VMs and see what you like. Or if you’re the distro-hopping kind, just distro-hop.

Had no idea Qt had 3D rendering… GUI designers get more creative. Let’s see a 3D email client.

Haha I used to do this all the time for my credit card PIN. Every time I had to enter it I had to get out a calculator as I didn’t remember the four-digit number but I did remember the expression I used to derive it.

Good luck trying to maintain the mammoth that is systemd… why not just switch to an alternative init system and focus your efforts on contributing to those, instead of trying to single-handedly maintain such a huge codebase?

Is there any evidence that they would go after random FOSS projects that aren’t hosted or developed in the relevant jurisdictions? Don’t comply in advance.

Signal is fine for normal/social chatting. It is centralised which makes it much harder to obscure identifying conversation metadata, and I wouldn’t recommend it for comms with a state threat model. I like SimpleX for addressing those issues.

If you just want to chat to friends and nothing else, I probably would recommend Signal for the most polished experience and most widely adopted open-source private messenger.

The middle ground is the middle ground between user freedom and corporate control. Which is not a spectrum you want to be in the middle of.

This is like getting a pay rise that’s below inflation. That’s a pay cut. And this is a loss.

And I’ve installed apps with adb install file.apk, your point?

Pretty sure they meant a smartphone with a desktop OS installed on it (eg Linux phones), not just “phone that looks kinda like a laptop but still uses Android”

Conversations move through different topics.

The origin of inefficiency as resistance comes from people in concentration camps deliberately doing poor jobs at forced labour as a form of resistance. If you’re posting on Lemmy right now you can do a lot more than inefficiency. The people who had to resort to inefficient slave labour as resistance could only dream of what you can do.

I’ve scanned a book with my phone and uploaded to Z-Library before when it was a book I couldn’t find online at all. Not a great quality pdf, but as someone who wanted to read the book for research and ended up having to buy a paper copy, I would’ve still preferred that pdf to nothing; it was still perfectly readable.

Like another commenter said, to get a good-quality pdf you’d have to take the spine off. Also note that it is really time-consuming and tedious to scan a book by hand (I assume there are machines that can automate it, but normal people don’t have those). Big respect to people who do it regularly, but you may not want to be one of those people.