I’m on Debian stable on my desktop but I tinkered with SteamOS on the SteamDeck, so Arch.

no more “oops I bricked my system” moments

I don’t actually know what that means. If the system because unbootable it’s because I explicitly messed it up, for example by editing fstab or tinkering with GRUB. I honestly can not remember an apt update that broke the system, and I don’t just mean my desktop (which I use daily, to work and play) but even my remote servers running for years.

So… I think that part mostly comes down to trusting the maintainer of the pinned distribution. They are doing their best to avoid dependency hell in a complex setup but typically, if you do select stable, it will actually be stable.

I do have discussions like this every few months on Lemmy and I think most people are confused about what is an OS vs. what is an application. IMHO an application CAN be unstable, e.g. Firefox or the slicer for your 3D printer because you do want the very latest feature for some reason. The underlying building blocks though, e.g. kernel, package manager, arguably drivers, basically the lower down the stack you go, the more far reaching the consequences. So if you genuinely want an unstable system somehow, go for it, but then it is by choice, explicitly, and then I find it hard to understand how one could then not accept the risk of “oops I bricked my system” moment.

Depends what you mean by “Linux” here.

It’s probably not the kernel itself, so do you mean

• a terminal e.g. a working shell where you can run commands e.g. ls | wc -l ?
• headless containers, e.g. services like Immich accessed elsewhere?
• a window manager e.g. KDE or Gnome?
• a software with a visual interface, or GUI, e.g. GCompris?

Based on that then one can answer if Termux is sufficient (or “legitimate”) or if something else is needed.

PS: You can read some of my notes on termux on different Android devices at https://fabien.benetou.fr/Tools/Android

long-awaited plans for an affordable car

You mean the 1, ONE, single, as in nothing else really matter, thing that gave any modicum of decency to Musk despite all this BS over the years and was again the very reason one could have been excited about him making Tesla so much more famous (not popular, as in… affordable) is actually not happening? Sorry, in Musk parlance, is happening next year?

shocked Pikachu face

I honestly feel disgusted because, even though I do not have a car, when Musk on ramped Tesla I was cheering for him. I do NOT think cars are the solution BUT if we have no other choice, I was naively thinking electric cars, specifically NOT fancy elitism expensive coupe or sedans, but rather affordable ones was one potential path. Meanwhile, years later, if I look by the window outside where I live, in Belgium, we do have electric plugs in the street (nice!) which are sadly used by a … fancy EV. At the same time in the city center the silent (literally) revolution have been electric bikes, especially cargo bikes and longtails. So many of those now used.

So tiring that CEOs of large company can claim vaporware constantly without any consequences. It’s damaging to entire ecosystem they overshadow. They already have economical power by their cheer scale but they also abuse the mindshare of potential customers and regulators. We need to hold them accountable to false claims, claims that are indefinitely delayed and it has to hurt the bottom line of their companies.

A group having rule is fine, in fact it’s needed for the group to sustain over time.

Unfortunately if this group is hoarding a resources, here a very popular meeting point for people who (in theory) care about “privacy” then the rule itself does not have to be “fair” or “right”.

So sure, when joining a group one must aware of the rules of said group, but it does not in itself means the rules of that group are automatically correct. I’m not saying here the rule is fine (I do have a personal opinion about it) but rather that this kind of event if precisely canary in the coalmine showing the genuine nature of the group, not what its name claims to be.

Glad I deleted my account last week.

Which isn’t standalone (or “all in one” as I imagine they meant). I have an Index and a SteamDeck. I can’t wait to buy something at the intersection of both.

normal window user who don’t know what a terminal is. Most of them even freak out when they see “the black box with text on it”.

Good point! That being said I’m wondering how we could help anybody, genuinely being inclusive, on how to transform that feeling of dread, basically “Oh, that’s NOT for me!”, to “Hmmm that’s the challenging part but it seems worth it and potentially feasible, I should try”. I believe it’s important because in turn the “normal window user” could potentially understand limitations hidden to them until now. They would not instantly better understand how their computer work but the initial reaction would be different, namely considering a path of learning.

Any idea or good resources on that? How can we both demystify the terminal with a pleasant onboarding? How about a Web based tutorial that asks user to try side by side to manipulate files? They’d have their own desktop with their file manager on one side (if they want to) and the browser window with e.g. https://copy.sh/v86/ (WASM) this way they will lose no data no matter what.

Maybe such examples could be renaming files with ImagesHoliday_WrongName.123.jpg to ImagesHoliday_RightName.123.jpg then doing that for 10 files, then 100 files, thus showing that it does scale and enables ones to do things practically impossible without the terminal.

Another example could be combining commands, e.g. ls to see files then wc -l to count how many files are in directory. That would not be very exciting so then maybe generating an HTML file with the list of files and the file count.

Honestly I believe finding the right examples that genuinely showcases the power of the terminal, the agency it brings, is key!

I recommend letting content creators about this and suggesting alternatives, e.g. PeerTube instances, Vimeo, etc.

Interesting, I knew they provide SIM for non eSIM phones (have a JMP SIM on the way with its USB adapter) but didn’t know about that service. Can you please explain a bit more how it works?

PS: for Europeans who worry about tariffs, mine wasn’t sent from the US, or Canada, but rather Netherlands, FWIW.

as how to change your default browser and search engine, suggestions for different OS’s and how to install them on any kind of computer, different options for Microsoft software, etc. For example, I’m on a Mac just because it’s still good and I don’t want to pay for a new one…I’d love either some simple ways to “harden” it and/or install Linux.

Wonderful, I can do that! I indeed assume that people just don’t “want” to install Linux because they think Windows, or other Microsoft products, is “good enough” for them but maybe they just don’t know how or imagine they don’t have the ability to do so. That’s a great suggestion I’ll try to address it soon, thanks!

buy the burner device in the US

Can you trust it then though?

With sxmo as the interface.

Ah… thanks! Well let me ask then, if there was another “Beyond Monopoly” video that could be less “advanced” what would you like it to be about?

FWIW I believe it’s mostly, if not only, for code.

My pleasure, thanks for sharing all this important knowledge!

PS: I have few related things on https://fabien.benetou.fr/Cookbook/DigitalSelfSovereignty so I’d be curious to hear your opinion on it.

Link https://www.punchinguppress.com/post/disengage-from-the-internet and ToC :

Part 1: Why Disengage?
    Chapter 1: What We’re Fighting Against
    Chapter 2: How Do We Reclaim Our Lives By Disengaging?
    Chapter 3: Giants In The Dark

Part 2: Disengage By…Reclaiming Your Data
    Chapter 4: Pay Attention to Privacy Policies
    Chapter 5: Control Your Online Accounts
    Chapter 6: Bash The Brokers
    Chapter 7: Surf In Secret
    Chapter 8: Escape Email Tracking
    Chapter 9: Protect Your Phone
    Chapter 10: Stop Being Loyal

Part 3: Disengage By…Reclaiming Your Home
    Chapter 11: Hide Your Home Address
    Chapter 12: Remove Your Home Photos From The Web
    Chapter 13: Banish Smart Products From Your Spaces

Part 4: Disengage By…Reclaiming Your Content
    Chapter 14: Protect Your Posts
    Chapter 15: Retract Your Reviews
    Chapter 16: Say Sayonara To Social Media

Part 5: Disengage By…Reclaiming Your Attention
    Chapter 17: Don’t Surf If You Don’t Need To
    Chapter 18: Annihilate Ads
    Chapter 19: Say See Ya To Your Smartphone
    Chapter 20: Ghost Corporate News

Part 6: Disengage By…Quitting The Big 4
    Chapter 21: Say Goodbye To Google
    Chapter 22: Say Au Revoir To Amazon
    Chapter 23: Say Arrivederci To Apple
    Chapter 24: Say Mmm-Bye To Microsoft

Part 7: Live Your Life

Same here, I’m not a pro but I tried few years ago and it wasn’t that stable. Now I can’t remember the last time it did crash on me, kudos to people behind Kdenlive!

Valve’s Debian based SteamOS

Not to confuse with the Arch based SteamOS running on the SteamDeck which is very functional.

I haven’t dig into it but I’d check https://lucaweiss.eu/post/2024-06-24-esim-manager-for-mobile-linux/ i.e. yes, in theory “normal” distributions as you list “should” support it… but rarely do modems on desktop (or even laptops?) support eSIM. Consequently it’s more on other devices, e.g. phones, and those tend to have dedicated distributions, e.g. PostMarketOS on a FairPhone but not on PinePhone as it doesn’t have eSIM support.

Angry update.