That was my first thought. How do you keep it cold enough to run in a place like Arizona, Spain, or Mexico? It also reminded me of my Windows Mobile days before I had a smartphone when someone on a Windows Mobile forum took a Dell Axim x51v and built a dock for it that exposed all the ports so he could use it with an external display as an infotainment/nav system. He called it the Aximizer. An old android phone with a micro-hdmi port might be the modern equivilant.

https://youtu.be/ELANGsiaq5M

Went through and verified that a number of things were backing up and updating correctly. I feel a little less weight on my shoulders knowing things are working as they should.

I followed a similar path. When I was on Gnome I hated plasma. When Gnome 3 dropped I tried a bunch of stuff like Cinnamon, Budgie, Xfce, Lxde, etc. and settled on Plasma which has only continued to be great over the hears. I value the tweaks and the fact that it can be configured 100% desktop centric without a bunch of touch/convergence stuff getting in the way.

I appreciate their philosophy. I’ve been a Linux user since the early 2000s and have cycled through 30-40 distros at least. I’m not a highly technical user. I would consider myself a solid intermediate. For a daily use system I prefer arch, but my servers run Debian. Most of the people writing install guides for the software I deploy seem to use Debian so I run into less issues this way. It can be hard to follow a guide for Gentoo when you’re using Hanna Montana Linux, know what I’m saying? Same thing with Debian. It’s just a solid choice with the bonus of having a better, more ethical philosophy, and the benefit of being widely adopted and supported by people who can help when you get stuck. I don’t even mind gnome on my servers since it works well with a single screen and it’s super rare that I actually need the server GUI anyway.

Willingness to independently learn and the capacity to let the frustration roll off of you. You will occasionally want to bang your head against the wall, but give yourself the grace to learn.

No shade to Gnome, because there is a place for them in the ecosystem, but this is why I moved from Gnome 2 to KDE (with a few stops along the way). One size will not fit all.

KDE for the desktop and xfce for the laptop

It might be a dumb question, but how does it have it’s own OS like a NAS, or is it basically a box attached to the host and everything is done via software? I encountered some confusion between enclosures, DAS, USB array and some of the other terms I was seeing.

Huh, I hadn’t heard of CachyOS. It seems like everyone went Arch>Manjaro>EndeavorOS. It looks good from the screenshots and I like seeing my favorite DE/WMs in there. If I don’t know what any of those acronyms and technical terms on their page mean, would I still get something out of it? I’m about due for my every-few-months wipe and reinstall.

We’ve been on similar journeys. I started with Ubuntu Warty Warthog and happily remember all the desktop effects lost to time (emerald window decorations anybody?). I went through a Windows phase and settled back into Linux. My newest epoch is the age of self hosting and I’ve been learning a lot especially since the advent of Lemmy. I also play games, but I’ve been using a fully segregated Windows PC for that, though I’ve used Linux in the past.

The last time someone asked this question a lot of people said Mint packages are too out of date. I love Mint, I used Mint for several years, but the graphic driver stuff seems to depend on being very up to date. Someone else could probably explain it better than me. Perhaps it’s not relevant anymore, but I would look into it.

As for KDE, it’s really good now. I used to cling HARD to Gnome back in the old days and really disliked KDE, but things really got shaken up and KDE has been absurdly good for a few releases now. The steam deck even uses it. Also, a lot more distros seem to have releases for more than one desktop environment now. I guess what I’m trying to say is stuff you used to like may suck now and stuff that used to suck could be S-tier. Good luck getting back into Linux. Don’t get discouraged. It’s gotten a lot easier since old timers like us were hacking around on Ubuntu in the early 2000s.

Has friend 2 set his name servers to something custom, or is he using your network’s default? My partner uses an iPhone and it has some sort of built in DNS so she doesn’t benefit from me installing DNS based adblock on the network. You could see if a similar thing is at play.

I’ve been a Linux user since 2005ish and a DJ since at least 2013. I’ve tried a lot of music players including Rythmbox. I settled on Clementine/Strawberry or Amorok, depending on use case. Haven’t used either of them recently.

With that said, there is no right answer. Find one you like!

You can sync Obsidian with your own storage location. There are plugins to do a lot of what you’re asking for. Downside is that it’s not open source, though your content is all stored in plaintext so you won’t lose it due to lock-in. It also might be more than your asking for and a simpler, more tailored, solution may be out there. Paired with a self hosted Nextcloud server, you may solve a bunch of your PIM needs at once.

I’m in the same boat. I have to change it every now and then to break the visual fatigue of staring at the same theme for weeks. I miss Compiz with Emerald and whatever we were using 5-10 years ago. Themes are less transformative nowadays. I used to have crazy themed and now it’s hard to find something that isn’t just a recolor of a fairly plain theme.

Having said that, someone shared this great theme roundup here on Lemmy a while back. I used the purple one and now the Solaris color one. https://quickfix.es/2023/10/going-off-theme-the-prologue/

I think they are saying the other way around, their caps lock activates Ctrl. I have mine set up as a left hand backspace. KDE has a number of built in options for this where you just need to tick a box to activate it. I miss it a lot on my work PC (windows)

I’m running Nextcloud and PaperlessNXG on my servers. Over the last few months I tested out my remote management. Now that I’m back home, I’ve been making a few adjustments based on my learnings. Firstly, Wireguard is slower than a turtle, while Tailscale has been a little bit faster. I’m guessing this is due to my upload speed and switching to fiber may fix this.

I’d also like to add TubeArchivist back in since there’s some great videos that I don’t trust Google to preserve given the direction things are going.

The folks on the “privacy” Lemmy gave me some good tips on app replacements and after making a big spreadsheet with all my apps, their licenses, etc., I cut down my remaining proprietary apps by at least 50% and I only have a few proprietary essentials that still depend on Google Play. I’ve been meaning to do this for a long time and I almost have a path towards completely removing all Google, Amazon, and Microsoft products from my life.

Next, I’d like to set up Wander to eventually get rid of Garmin/Strava but I haven’t been able to figure it out and I’m still locked in to some degree because of my hardware (Garmin watch). The Ring doorbell has to be the next thing to go, but I’m exhausted and haven’t had the motivation to start a new project until the dust settles from the last one.

I have an XPS 13 9370 that has been great for my particular preferences. Having said that, I won’t bug another one. When it finally dies (on my third battery and still going strong) I will go for something more open, repairable, and Linux focused, maybe Framework or System76.

Get what you can afford. In many cases, Linux running on a potato will outperform and outlast a more expensive machine running windows for basic use tasks.

I’m a fan of Wander, and have followed these posts with great interest, but haven’t been able to successfully install it get myself. I’ll give it another try in late Feb early Mar.

That’s more or less the advice I’ve gotten as well. I’ve also read good things about fail2ban which tries to ban sources of repeated authentication failures to prevent brute force password attempts. I’ve used it, but the only person who has managed to get banned is myself! I did get back in after the delay, but I’m happy to know it works.

I’ve had people send me route links from that before. I’ll check it out. Without knowing much about it, it’s not Google owned and that’s an automatic point in its favor.