Ugh… why? I mean it’s a fun process to distro hop and better understand the different package managers, boot process, default services, etc but beyond that I’m confused at what the point is.

FWIW one can distro hop “virtually” in minutes using containers via Podman or Docker (or even QEMU to be more isolated) with images that do have a window manager, e.g. https://docs.linuxserver.io/images/docker-webtop/ provides Alpine, Arch, Debian, Enterprise Linux, Fedora and Ubuntu with i3, KDE, MATE or XFCE. Switching from one to another takes minutes (basically download time of image content) and if you mount the right directory you can even use your own content for your tests.

Edit : if one wants to install nothing https://distrosea.com/ is quite neat but it’s online.

digital privacy and security

I bet there is an amalgamation going on there.

People who wants to maximum amount of security might not care as much about privacy, thinking relying on a famous actor which spends a ton on security (and runs ads to say so) give them privacy, typically Google or Meta, while ignoring their interests in using private data for profit.

The other way around some people claim they cherish privacy, which sounds like your uncle, yet can not realistically achieve it by using outdated systems leading to poor security and thus potentially bad privacy.

The 2 go hand in hand yet are different.

LineageOS and asked if I could use it […] He went to the Google Play Store and installed Files by Google after logging into my account.

Ugh… sorry to say but if your goal is “what a phone without Google services” then your father did not understand that. He might be able to help you but he might not. The point though is that have to clarify with him WHY you want to try that. Only then can he help with the how.

Anyway for music I recommend VLC, it even has an option to become a Web server to receive file. If you do exchange files often with your Linux desktop I also recommend KDE Connect which helps for SMSes too and more, you can even define custom commands. I recommend removing the PlayStore entirely and relying solely on F-Droid and on a case by case basis potentially on .apk from sources you trust, e.g. Signal Website.

Which of these commits https://github.com/rsyslog/rsyslog/commits/ as actually made with “AI” support and how?

Yes.

TL;DR: I don’t actually know, that’s how much I care.

Agree but nobody forces you to use anything except ProtonMail or ProtonVPN. In fact I have a visionary account and I mostly just use ProtonMail. I do use ProtonVPN but I also have WireGuard. Also my ProtonMail addresses are behind domains I host. If tomorrow I decide to switch away from Proton, I can.

So… sure Proton is not perfect and centralization is bad but IMHO it’s like saying Firefox is imperfect so it’s fine to use Chrome or Chromium browsers. Imperfect alternatives to BigTech and surveillance capitalism is better than relying on the things you hate until something “perfect” never comes along.

Looks like, I’m not familiar enough to spot obvious differences.

something watching, logging connections to everyone connected to that torrent

Might be, FWIW there are quite a few ways to torrent in a rather private way, namely require encrypted connection, have a blocklist, require to be behind a VPN, etc … but in the end you still share data with strangers, that’s the core premise. The whole point is to facilitate the sharing of data reliably but then who joins the pool is outside of the protocol itself.

For a bit of mindfuck check kdialog : Tool to show nice dialog boxes from shell scripts

Maybe the shell truly is enough BUT in some cases, say you want to help somebody who for some reason doesn’t want the terminal, you can bring the bare minimum of UI to give utility. My favorite example is the file picker e.g kdialog --getopenfilename "*txt" | wc -l as most CLI commands do support a filename as input.

On mobile check out OctoStudio.

IMHO qrcode-terminal is pretty good.

• ~/Prototypes for … my prototypes, typically either starting from an empty directory or cloning a repository and adapting it for my needs. I have this directory on nearly all my devices, desktop of course but also NAS, server, phone, standalone XR headset, etc.
• ~/Apps in addition to ~/bin, typically binaries but all AppImages

FWIW I’m not recommending or not this service but they are :

• based in the US, yet
• provide international roaming
• e-SIMs (so nothing to send)

so it might be interesting in some cases for people not living in the US.

Well there are guardrails from what I understood, including :

• executing commands (off by default)
• executing commands without user confirmation (off by default)

which are IMHO reasonable but if the person this happened to is right, there is no filesystem sandbox, e.g. limited solely to the project repository.

Can’t talk about AMD but I’m on NVIDIA and I always followed https://wiki.debian.org/NvidiaGraphicsDrivers and never had issues others seem to be having. I typically hear good things about AMD GPU support, on Debian and elsewhere so I’m surprised.

Now in practice IMHO GPU support doesn’t matter much for NAS, as you’re probably going headless (no monitor, mouse or keyboard). You probably though do want GPU instruction set support for transcoding but here again can’t advise for this brand of GPU. It should just be relying on e.g. https://trac.ffmpeg.org/wiki/Hardware/AMF

Finally I’m a Debian user and I’m quite familiar with setting it up, locally on remotely. I also made ISOs for RPi based on Raspbian so this post made me realize I never (at least I don’t remember) installed Debian headlessly, by that I mean booting on a computer with no OS all the way to getting a working ssh connection established on LAN or WiFi. I relied on Imager for RPi configuration or making my own ISO via a microSD card (using dd) but it made me curious about preseeding wiki.debian.org/DebianInstaller/Preseed so I might tinker with it via QEMU. Advices welcomed.

PS: based on few other comments, consider minidlna over more complex setups. Consider Wireguard over tailscale (or at least headscale for a version relying solely on your infrastructure) with e.g. wg-easy if you want to manage everything without 3rd parties.

That’s a strange argument, why do you and lots of people replying here believe they are NOT tracked over WiFi which are themselves relying on ISPs?

If you don’t trust your ISP why would you trust random ISPs more?

As mentioned on another Lemmy server IMHO and as the vibe coder mentions in his video the main problem isn’t that LLMs suck in general (hallucinations, ecological costs, lack of openness for the most popular ones, performance, etc) but rather that this specific tool made by Google does not sandbox anything by default.

Copilote

Is it the Mexican version? /s

Pay for stuff if you want something reliable and supporting your privacy. Sure test the free tier to make sure it fits your requirements but please do consider not sticking to it.

Might be Filen (don’t know of it) or Hetzner Storage Box (~10e/month for 5TB iirc) or Proton Drive (Visionary customers have a large quantity, e.g. >6TB) or whatever else you prefer but if you do not actually help people providing services by funding their work they you are supporting BigTech and their “free plans” that comes precisely at the cost of our collective privacy.

IMHO fix whatever you can, donate it all locally (HackerSpace, RepairCafe, Linux non-profit, etc) as there are quite a few people dedicated to refurbishing computers for schools, people who need a computer to find work, etc.

Then for the tinkering aspect, keep one, that’s enough.

Honestly even 1 isn’t really required. Pretty much everything listed here can be done more efficiently without an actual physical computer :

• your current computer can be a server, just turn off the screen or even accept (which I’d argue is a fair assumption) that at night it will be off. If you want external access put WireGuard or another VPN on it.
• Want to test distributions or anything else? QEMU or containers, no need for actual hardware