Xmonad with XFCE in no-desktop mode.

I can use the xfce tools to configure things like mouse and screen settings, but visually it’s just xmonad.

FDroid itself

Yes that’s a nice thing to fix a problem with a software update. But isn’t it funny how the possibility of updating after purchase seems to mean that products ship without really being well tested. If there’s no possibility of fixing problems once something is in the field, then you make damn sure it works before it goes out the door.

Whoa, better make sure all my pwds are in keepass! Didn’t know the fines were so hefty for that.

Firefox for most browsing (especially youtube with ublock), chrome for facebook.

Ah yes the “Full Self Driving” brand of limited autopilot requiring constant human supervision.

No more tricky than windows these days. Nice thing is there’s a lack of commercial BS - spyware, ads, unwanted apps etc. And pretty much no matter how old your computer gets, you can still run brand new linux on it.

Brother laser printer, black and white, ethernet connection. So fast, so reliable. Do you really NEED color? I find that its not that important, and if I need quality prints, like for photos, a 300$ printer isn’t going to cut it anyway.

BeOS went under.

Ed: I was a huge apple fan, bought an apple clone from Power Computing. Then Apple revoked the licensing that allowed all the apple clone companies to exist. That’s when I went to BeOS which would run on my clone, and got a multicore intel machine too. When BeOS went under I tried Suse. Had kind of a sucky UI in my opinion, but I hung in there with linux as an alternative to windows and went Ubuntu/Debian/Arch/Nixos and I’m still on nixos now. Its pretty much my exclusive OS since I quit my job that required windows 5 or 6 years ago.

Probably this article

Looking seriously at this one, especially because my main laptop has power/hinge problems. Waiting on verified linux support tho. Crazy that the thinkpad one is 1K more.

I kind of want to try wayland just to be modern, but I’m pretty happy with xmonad and don’t want to learn another window manager.

I hear you, its great for most cases, but when a package isn’t available or downloads binaries that depend on hfs it sucks. I’ve been going through hell with android dev lately and am currently doing my compiles on debian, lol.

I think nixos is still niche, but seems to be gaining momentum. It has some unique features:

• Every package has its own dependencies, so you can install a 7 year old firefox alongside the latest, and have no interference.
• Packages with dependencies in common still share them (for space savings).
• Abandons the HFS, but can still fake it for apps that need it.
• Can make dev environments that are exactly reproducible across machines, and only exist within a specific shell session. So you can have a project that relies on an out of date version of a compiler, and another that uses the latest, and run both at the same time.
• Make your own packages that other people can install using a git repo address.
• The package language can also describe a machine’s configuration; systemd services, default packages, user accounts, etc.
• You can build and remotely deploy a machine config in one line.
• You can cross compile a machine config for another cpu architecture, like ARM.
• OS upgrades are atomic, and reversible. If it doesn’t work out, you can go back to the previous config.
• No reason to ever reinstall. Recently upgraded a machine that had sat in a closet for 5 years to the newest release. Flawless upgrade.
• Nixos boasts more packages than any other distro, over 100,000.

There are certainly downsides - poor docs, confusing core language. Instructions for installing something on say debian will not work on nixos. I do think this style of package management is the future, if perhaps not this specific implementation. It can be a pain but its also super solid.

I went the jank monstrosity path. Well, a few scripts anyway.

I use an app called SimpleSSHD on the phone that lets me ssh in. Then rsync to transfer files. The script to sync pictures is like this:

# file 'droidip' contains the local wifi ip of the phone.  
dip=$(cat droidip)

rsync --append-verify --progress  -avz -e "ssh -p 2222" root@$dip:/sdcard/DCIM/Camera newphonepix

Truthfully it was as much about learning rsync as anything, and now I’m sticking with it because momentum I guess. adb is way faster if you really need to move a lot of files.

I picture these pages being inviting and helpful, with maybe ascii art “awk sweet awk” or the like, rather than the current “maintenance locker full of random tools” vibe

Kind of off topic, but you know what would be cool? If you had an ‘man explain’ command that would define all the flags/args in a command, like:

man explain rsync --append-verify --progress -avz -e "ssh -p 2222" root@$dip:/sdcard/DCIM/Camera newphonepix

Would give you:

rsync - a fast, versatile, remote (and local) file-copying tool
      --append-verify          --append w/old data in file checksum
      --progress               show progress during transfer
      --archive, -a            archive mode is -rlptgoD (no -A,-X,-U,-N,-H)
      --verbose, -v            increase verbosity
      --compress, -z           compress file data during the transfer
      --rsh=COMMAND, -e        specify the remote shell to use 

etc.

The author seems dead set on a tauri calendar implementation. I came across what is apparently a scheduling toolkit in rust:

https://github.com/fmeringdal/nettu-scheduler

Which I guess could be used to build a desktop calendar app. One flaw in the ointment is that a calendar program really needs email integration. Downloading an ICS file and manually transferring that over to your calendar app isn’t going to cut it.

Which brings us to the lack of solid calendar servers. I’ve searched but I haven’t found anything popular, OSS, easy to install, and useful for groups. Radicale exists but multi user support is a janky hack, while Nextcloud has unreliable sync. I’m looking for features like:

• reliable calendar sync
• sharable calendars.
• scheduling help - when to have a meeting?
• how many attendees for a group event, how many invited etc.

nope

Hot take: tire particulates are a conservative anti-EV talking point. “My V8 mustang weighs less than an EV, therefore its better on pollution than a EV because tire particulates”. Totally disregarding the impact of tailpipe emissions.