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.

I also have a PinePhone and PinePhone Pro… but I wouldn’t (yet) recommend them as daily drivers unless :

• you are REALLY committed to privacy
• don’t care much for the camera
• don’t need mobile “Apps” and fine using the Web or Linux (which are great) apps
• don’t need much battery
• you are eager to tinker.

If you’re in EU https://murena.com/smartphones/ is a good compromise IMHO and it will be radically cheaper than an iPhone. I imagine elsewhere there are other companies selling new or refurbished deGoogled phones. Again that’ll probably set you back 300 € versus 1000 € for an iPhone. One is a tool, the other is, again from my biased perspective a former iPhone user, a tool too but mostly a status symbol.

Edit on parental controls : from a technical standpoint, which I’d argue it’s only part of the challenge, I’ve found https://doc.e.foundation/support-topics/parental-control specifically but more broadly https://f-droid.org/en/packages/io.timelimit.android.open/ or https://f-droid.org/en/packages/io.timelimit.android.aosp.direct/ which are more about self discipline. There is also https://github.com/xMansour/KidSafe but seems outdated.

Android always sends requests to Google.

If you meant even deGoogled Androids (e.g. /e/OS as suggested here), not stock Android, then can you please send references on that?

A de-googled phone with no Play Services is too limiting.

Isn’t microG with alternative app stores sufficient for most people?

Nice, how does it compare to Kdenlive?

The general consensus amongst the Android community is that rooting is detrimental to privacy. In a sense, I agree with them since privilege escalation because of human error becomes a much bigger threat if the user has root access.

No, that’s BS. It entirely depends on your “threat model” just like security.

Namely if you go full OSHW/FLOSS and yet you volunteer your data on Facebook.com (or whatever that website is called today) then you have no privacy. It’s not a technical problem, it’s a behavior problem.

If your threat model is about government hiring dedicated staff to know what you are up to, or that the infrastructure you rely is can’t be trusted, then rooting is the last of your problems.

I’m not saying you shouldn’t worry but I don’t see the relevance of rooting Android in that situation. Root or not does not somehow change how your modem behaves, you’re still at the mercy of the drivers.

I recommend you check projects like Precursor (at https://precursor.dev/ redirecting to the CrowdSupply page) which try to tackle, if I understood correctly, the kind of worry you have, namely actually understand the entire stack.

That being said, even in such context, you still rely on some infrastructure to relay messages to others so you need that and the recipients to also respect your privacy. If not (which would be a fair assumption) then at least you must understand the cryptographic primitives you rely on… and if you don’t (which most people don’t, me included despite my interest in the mathematics behind that, in particular one-way functions) then you have to some trust in the public research in the domain.

So… I do have a Precursor, tinker with it, PinePhone and PinePhone Pro, had an iOS phone until recently, switched to (rooted) /e/OS and my personal position is that while interacting with others (and a mobile is 100% about that) one has to make pragmatic about their choices.

oculus software for my vr

Check https://lvra.gitlab.io/ for plenty of options. I’m playing VR on Linux but it’s using SteamVR with the Index.

the world runs off GitHub whether we like it or not

It doesn’t and we don’t like it anyway.

PS: to clarify, yes GitHub is wildly popular but, and the kernel is a particularly interesting example, it does not host ALL projects, only a lot of popular ones. A lot of very popular ones are also NOT there but rather on their own git, mailing list, GitLab instance, Gitea, etc. It’s a shortcut, I understand that, but by ascertaining it as “truth” it’s hiding a reality that is quite different and showing that reliable alternatives do exist.

It’s federated, so one can setup whatever instance they want on whatever domain they want.

If the admin feels “.wtf” is edge, cool. If someone else believe it’s NSFW or wouldn’t help promote the cause, they can setup another instance on another domain. If the content itself is federated, they might share that link instead.

True, in fact I’ve done so myself (simplifying a curve resulting of hand sketching). Still I’d argue that’s not the expected behavior of storing the vector file but rather explicitly modifying it.

main difference between raster graphics and vector graphics was the quality

It’s not. The primitives, the most basic constitutive building blocks, are different, for raster it’s the pixel (a mix of colors, e.g. red/green/blue) whereas for vector it’s the … vector (a relative position elements, e.g. line, circle, rectangle or text start with).

This is a fundamental distinction on how you interact with the content. For raster you basically paint over pixels, changing the values of pixels, whereas for vector you change values of elements and add/remove elements. Both can be lossless though (vector always is) as for raster can have no compression or lossless compression. That being said raster does have a grid size (i.e. how many pixels are stored, e.g. 800x600) whereas vector does not, letting you zoom infinitely and see no aliasing on straight lines.

Anyway yes it’s fascinating. In fact you can even modify SVG straight from the browser, no image editor or text editor needed, thanks to your browser inspector (easy to change the color of a rectangle for example) or even the console itself then via JavaScript and contentDocument you can change a lot more programmatically (e.g. change the color of all rectangles).

It’s a lot of fun to tinker with!

Switched from iOS (iPhone XS) to Android (/e/OS on CMF Nothing, installed by Murena) and 0 regret.

I switched the same day but I didn’t transfer all content, only contacts, 2FA auth and installed most apps I needed. Transition was very easy thanks to Firefox Account and because most of what I really is Web based anyway (e.g. HomeAssistant for my self-hosted IoT setup). KDE Connect was indeed a great surprise, I thought it’d be the same as on iOS but it’s a LOT more functional. Also using Termux (rather than iSH on iOS) with access to the storage made tinkering way easier and powerful.

My new phone is actually 1/3rd of the price of the flagship I bought 6 years ago… but they feel the same. I like that a lot because I do NOT want my phone to “feel” special, I want it to “just” be a functional piece of tech, valuable only for what it does, not what it “is”. It’s not a totem, it’s just a thing I rely on. So yes switching made that very striking.

Overall if you want to “just” move away from iOS or Googled Android I find Murena value proposition to be on point.

Meanwhile https://www.europarl.europa.eu/petitions/en/petition/content/0729%252F2024/html/Linux%2Bstatt%2BWindows just closed with 2474 Supporters

I also have a SteamDeck and it’s IMHO one of the best device to promote Linux. Just hand skeptic the device, let them play and ask them how the experience then if they can guess the OS.

never could get away from Windows entirely. Especially for gaming, and a few critical apps.

Been gaming exclusively on Linux now for few years, including in VR. Just few hours ago before my work day I was playing Elden Ring with controller. 0 tinkering, System key, “EL”[ENTER] then play. So… unless you need kernel level anti-cheat, Linux is pretty good for gaming nowadays.

Same of the few “critical” apps, I don’t know what these are but rare are the ones without equivalent and/or that don’t work with Wine, sometimes even better that on Windows.

Anyway : Debian. Plain and simple, not BS with a mix bag of installers (but you can still use AppImage or am or even nix whenever you want to). It just works and keep on working.

Another Debian suggestion here, including for gaming and even VR. It basically just works.

considered OpenWRT […] now I just need a commercially available solution.

FWIW you can buy OpenWRT based hardware, no tinkering, e.g. https://www.turris.com/en/products/omnia/

Looks like https://old.reddit.com/r/kde/comments/d3m0fz/how_to_open_links_in_mpv_with_klipper/ is a good starting point, i.e

• Open menu in system tray.
• Right click on Clipboard => Configure Clipboard.
• Go to Actions Configuration => Add Action.

then… to try! :D I’m just discovering this too but seems like the right way.

That said I’d be cautious and limit the use case to only what you have, e.g. Spotify links, at least at first because I imagine one can get into hairy edge cases quickly.

Keep us posted!