I jumped on a lifetime deal they had a few years back. I mostly use it via the web UI and Android app, so I cannot comment on desktop or CLI client functionality.

The Android app is “okay”, but not great. Background photo sync doesn’t work consistently; I need to manually launch the app periodically to jog it. I know Android is kind of aggressive about background services, but other apps do this better so I think this is on Filen. Perhaps they should run a permanent notification to stay alive 24/7, like Syncthing does?

As with pretty much every other cloud storage app, it does not let me sync arbitrary folders/files, only photos and videos. *sigh*

It uses Android’s file provider API, so you can open and save files in most apps directly from/to Filen. However, this only seems to work for one-time use, not for apps that need to regularly open/save the same file. For example, when using Keepass2Android, you can have it store your password database on a cloud storage service. This works pretty well with Google Drive, but with Filen it loses the connection frequently because the pseudopaths the API returns are not stable over time (which makes sense, I guess, and is one more reason I want arbitrary local file sync instead). Personally, I went back to storing my Keepass database locally and then periodically backing it up rather than keeping it on live cloud storage.

It’s one of the cheapest E2EE cloud storage services I’ve seen (definitely the cheapest for me with the lifetime promo I got), and the core functionality of uploading and downloading files (and folders) works. That’s good enough for me to give it the thumbs-up.

I refer you to #7 on Bruce Tognazzini’s evergreen top ten list of design bugs.

https://www.asktog.com/Bughouse/10MostWantedDesignBugs.html

I’m not sure what the exact model is, but it’s probably from the Performa or Power Mac 5000 or 6000 series. It’s low-res so it’s hard to read, but the text next to the floppy drive says “PowerPC”, referring to the CPU family used in Macs in that era.

The screen looks like Mac OS 8. It’s so low-rest that it’s kind of hard to tell, but the menu bar at the top of the screen is clearly from Mac OS. Could be 7.5, but I’m guessing 8 since that’s what’s shown in the web browser.

I think the left screen is showing Windows. Again, super low-res, but those look like Windows 95/98’s blue window title bars and gray task bar at the bottom.

Same.

That was probably the intention. X-Files was at its height of popularity around this time (assuming 1997 by the Mac model and OS 8).

Seems insane that even after disabling all related options in the main settings GUI, there are still like two dozen things enabled in about:config.

Snapchat does not use end-to-end encryption for messages, so it doesn’t even belong in the conversation.

WhatsApp and FB Messenger are somewhat defensible choices since they at least use E2EE by default (Messenger did not until recently). However, there are a few good reasons to favor Signal:

1. It is open source. Interested parties can actually verify that Signal’s encryption claims are true. Interested parties can also audit new versions as they released.
2. Facebook/Meta, as a company, has a long history of tracking users, leaking user data, and even conducting psychological experiments on users without consent and in secret.
3. WhatsApp and Messenger only allow 6-digit PINs to secure your messages. With that PIN, you can decrypt those messages. Signal allows for longer alphanumeric passcodes.
4. Facebook makes no promises not to track your usage of Messenger or WhatsApp, only that the messages themselves are encrypted.

Additionally, you can set Android to use an ad-blocking DNS server without apps. In Settings > Network & Internet > DNS, select “Private DNS” and set the hostname to a custom server, like base.dns.mullvad.net (Mullvad’s DNS server is free to the public, does not require a VPN subscription).

The per-app controls sound neat! I might give that a try. Google killed the ability to restrict apps’ network access years ago, specifically so ads would always work. I’ve never tried a local VPN as a workaround.

It used to say “container-native”. They recently changed the wording, but there was no technical change.

It’s a Linux distro that runs locally, like any other. It has no particular tie-in with any cloud services. If Flatpak, Docker/Podman, Distrobox, Homebrew, etc. are “cloud” just because they involve downloading packages hosted on the internet, then I don’t know why you wouldn’t call “traditional” package managers like apt, dnf, zypper, etc. “cloud” as well. 🤷 So yeah, I feel your confusion.

The big difference compared to something like Debian or vanilla Fedora is that Bazzite is an “immutable” distro. What this means is that the OS image is monolithic and you don’t make changes directly to the system. Instead, you install apps and utilities via containers, or as a last resort you can apply a layer on top of the OS using rpm-ostree.

The only thing cloud-related about any of this is that atomic OS images and containers are more common in the server space than the desktop space.

There’s a separate command called visudo for this purpose.

You CAN use any ol’ text editor but visudo has built-in validation specific to the sudoers file. This is helpful because sudoers syntax is unique and arcane, and errors are potentially quite harmful.

Weird. That used to say “container-native”, which at least makes sense – it heavily emphasizes container technologies like Flatpak, Docker/Podman, and Distrobox.

There’s no yum or dnf like on a standard Fedora system (though you can use rpm-ostree if you are desperate). As an “immutable” distro, it’s designed so that you do not install apps at the system level.