I wish I had moved to Linux sooner. I was in IT at the time and only saw windows and OSX in the wild. Servers were all windows except for one xserve. I still to this day have no idea what that server did for that customer. My only real experience with Linux at that time was FreePBX when setting up phone systems for offices.

I put OSX on mine. A $200 Macbook mini was a cool project and a neat conversation piece.

In hindsight, this has been a downward trend since the proliferation of smart phones circa 2012. Google (android) isn’t the best choice, but it is much better being open source over other ecosystems namely Apple. There is also an issue I strongly suspect that wireless carriers wouldn’t allow open hardware/software on their networks because they have baked in restrictions in the major OSes on how you can access the network like tethering. I don’t expect that to change for the better either because even when net neutrality was a thing wireless was exempt from the rules. Kinda reminds me how back in the day ISPs had to be forced to offer naked DSL (internet from the phone company without requiring phone service). This all has deep issues that won’t be resolved anytime soon if ever. I’m putting my money on Linux becoming an actual threat to Microsoft and Apple in the desktop, laptop, handheld space and then that spreading into the mobile and tablet space. Depending on how Apple and Google antitrust situations are handled, we could start to see a shift by the end of the decade at best. This is why the tech sector will cozy up and do the bidding of whoever is in power. They won’t run the risk of drawing the ire of the government to break up their monopolies so long as the party in power believes tech companies are in their party’s pocket. This shift happened when Biden’s election was inevitable toward Democrat favored polices and it’s happening now for Republican favord polices since the last Biden Trump debate made a Trump victory inevitable.

My points are the tech sector is blatantly doing whatever it can to keep its power and change won’t happen quickly if it happens at all.

Self hosted Searxng for me

This will be a problem until a non-google open OS is adopted for mobile phones. Right now that list is incredibly short and nothing competes in the flagship department. I don’t see it changing anytime soon because gen x and millenials may be the last generations that have a signifigant portion of itself that has a grasp of how computers work beyond “tap app icon, app does things”.

Thing I took for granted like how a file system works is lost on my kids (late Z early alpha). Explaining what a file extension is like teaching a new language. I used to think “training wheels” for learning computering via tablets and phones and touch screens were a good thing but there is nothing that compels people today to shed themselves of them. It feels very reminiscent of my childhood and teaching my boomer dad how to right click. I think computer literacy needs to be required education, but I’m afraid that the definition for computer literacy might be meaningless nowadays if it doesn’t go beyond open app store, install app, run app.

Hey! Man you disrespectin’ me?

There’s also LMDE which is mint built on Debian instead of Ubuntu. The Mint guys had the foresight to prepare for a future when they’d get fed up with Ubuntu’s nonsense.

There was a time where your ISP provided access to a Usenet server for free, but they didn’t have all the newsgroups like alt.binaries or even the whole alt hierarchy. Nowadays you gotta pay for access, and you’ll get access to all newsgroups. With the deals going on now, unlimited access is cheaper than most any streaming service.

For people who don’t use a lot/often enough to justify a monthly sub or as a backup if you go over a cap or failover if your main goes down

How much is Jack involved? He was the reason Twitter went to shit to begin with.

TrueNAS is switching apps from kubernetes to docker. Might wait till October if wanting to spin up something new. I’ve got to figure out how to migrate my TrueCharts apps or find the equivalent when the time comes to upgrade

I’ve been saying this for over a year. The era of free stuff on the internet is coming to a close. Be prepared to pay or self host things you’re used to getting for free. It’s what got me into self hosting.

Welcome to sauce tomatoes. They spider out all over the place if left unattended

Then you’ll love this video. He pets Blackberry throughout the video and has a segment at the end talking about sponsorblock blocking segments with Mr Clinton in them.

I always viewed the think pad line as more of a business line of products. I know it isn’t owned by IBM anymore, but considering how much involvement they had with Redhat, you might have better luck trying a fedora based distro. I’m running fedora Fedora 40 beta plasma and it was basically install and start working.

I also like this setting for displaying separate up and down votes

I remember when YouTube had background playback for free. An update broke it, then it was put behind a paywall.

That’s what the Mint guys did until they said fuck it and made Cinnamon

Censorship of words makes me not know which definition of regarded you are using.

It’s run by Jack. The same Jack, founder of Twitter that was at the helm while Twitter went to shit before Musk got it. I know Musk era has been really bad, but it was getting really bad under Jack. I wouldn’t trust a social network run by him or Musk or Zuck.