A good alternative to Bitwarden is KeePass/KeepassXC btw

I love Immich and Sharkey but both use Discord. Sharkey even used Matrix in the beginning but eventually switched to Discord. I think their reasoning was that they were often attacked by trolls etc. and that Matrix didn't had good options for moderation etc.

And while I love Matrix I fully agree. Yes there are moderation bots like Draupnir and they're good but you will need to self host them and register a user for them and and and. It's not as easy as with Discord or even Telegram bots. Also there are many Discord bots providing very fun elements like levels, reputations, roles etc. which simply do not exist or aren't even possible in Matrix as it currently is.

On top of that we have the decentralization "problem" for end users who aren't technical. They simply don't care much about privacy and they don't care if Discord stores every single message and picture in clear text forever on their servers. It's easier to create a Discord account on a centralized platform than understanding Matrix understanding which server to choose, understanding which client to choose and understanding how encryption, key management etc. works. Yes decentralization is important and great but for the average user it's still something that they do not really know which "overcomplicates" it for them.

And another point is that Matrix spaces are simply not the same as Discord servers. Channels are not as easy to manage because they are rooms on their own in Matrix and a space is not a server but rather a way to organize multiple rooms. Not every client supports spaces yet. Clients implement them differently. Then there's Element and Element X on phones confusing people new to Matrix etc. In Discord several channels can be grouped in another category. In Matrix you'd use Subspaces for that giving you the same issue as with normal spaces.

And most clients don't implement simple things on mobile like...sending multiple images at once. From the perspective of an end user that fact annoys the heck out of anyone wanting to send several pictures.

So yeah I think it's a mixture out of those things.

Matrix especially needs better bot support with bots that could be used by everyone as it is with Discord instead of being only usable by server admins or the bots creators as it is with many Matrix bots. And it does need a better solution for spaces with rooms or another thing in the specs that replicates how Discord servers work so that it's a "space" with actual "subchannels" without every space technically being it's own room dangling around in limbo and just being "sorted" into the space.

And it needs better moderation tools.

I disagree while agreeing. The biggest reason people use windows is simply because its pre-installed. That's the same reason people use Edge on Windows or Bing as their search engine. They get it preinstalled and don't know how to change it.

If you install anyone Linux and give them a simple and easy distro preinstalled they're usually fine with a few words about how to use it, update it and install stuff. Especially if they're not tech savvy because in this case they wouldn't know exactly how to use Windows either. I mean look at companies: how many employees use Windows in their daily work but still don't know how to actually usw windows? They get teached to use their software and tools but not the OS itself and have to figure things out on the OS level if they would want to change something on Windows too.

My observation was that people that are not tech savvy find it easier to understand some beginner friendly Linux distros than Windows.

If on the other hand a person is used to use Windows and knows how to actually use Windows it's harder for them to switch because things are just different on Linux. For me it's hard and annoying to use Windows which I have to do at work since February. Before that I used Linux in private my whole life, I used it in school because my school never used Windows as one of the few schools in my country and my last employer also used Linux. And from that perspective I can say that Windows is hard and not intuitive. It's just being used because it's being used. I guess you could compare it to Whatsapp vs Signal. From an objective standpoint Signal is better but most people still use WhatsApp because others use it and because it comes preinstalled on some Android phones.

Mastodon is very Twitter like. It's focus is on implementing the main features and it's just the software most users use. Then there's also other software like Misskey (and Calckey (which I run on my server) as well as some other fork of which I've forgotten the name). Misskey (and its forks) implement additional features that Mastodon doesn't have and don't use the Mastodon API. So using Mastodon apps with them won't work as good. There are Misskey apps though.

My personal opinion is, that Misskey and Calckey have a better and more modern approach in regards to UI/UX-Design. However that's subjective. Misskey and Calckey also have additional features like longer posts (3000 characters per default with Calckey), pages, clips, drive and much more. Misskey and Calckey also use Reactions instead of "Favorites" which means that if you react with a 🎉 emoji to a post users on Misskey and Calckey will see that emoji as a reaction. Mastodon users will just see it as a favorite (so as a star).

In general I used Mastodon for quite a while and switched to running my own Calckey server at calckey.braydmedia.de

I'm currently on Wayland with Nvidia hardware and it's running fine tbh

I am younger than 25, but I’m a Sys-Admin.

However my mother also uses the Fediverse and has nearly to none technical knowledge.

Also my cousin who’s 15 uses it. And some friends of mine who are between 18 to 26 use it without being what you typically would call a nerd.

So I think for the majority it applies but there are also people here not fitting in this sector.

Honestly everything besides Debian and Arch after distro hopping for years.

The Tor project, Libre Office, Signal, Matrix.org, NixOS, Fedora

I'd love to use it especially since Android Auto is working on it, too. The only thing holding me back is not being able to pay with my phone. I'm currently only having my phone and keys with me. So it's extra convenient to not have to take my wallet with me.

But to be fair the devs can't make anything against that restriction as of now. I still wish there would be some way to be able to pay contactless using your card with GrapheneOS.

I personally just switched from Immich to Ente on my self hosted server, since it is E2EE and since sync doesn't work that good for users on iOS with Immich right now. Also Ente just open sourced all their stuff including their server and supports self hosting. Very nice.

I agree. But I think is much easier for people to use KeePass compared to self hosting Vaultwarden

I love Immich and we used it for a long time but we eventually switched to Ente Photos simply because Immich's upload on iOS isn't really working and it took hours for some members in my family to sync 200 pictures that are being synced within a few minutes on Android. That was frustrating.

With Ente Photos that's working fine so we decided to make the switch.

Take something like GrapheneOS if security is important for you:

1. No bloatware
2. 7 years of updates on the new pixel phones with it
3. Much more secure than an iPhone
4. An iPhone isn't really privacy respecting or similar even though Apple always claims it to be
5. An iPhone locks you in. Heck you can't even let Nextcloud or Immich sync files in the background on iOS just because Apple says "no background sync only works good with our own services so you give us your money and use iCloud Photos and Drive".

Debian is awesome but only if you don't care about having the newest features and updates.

I had everything behind my LAN, but published things like Nextcloud to the outside after finally figuring out how to do that even without a public IPv4 (being behind DS-Lite by my provider).

I knew about Cloudflare Tunnels but I didn't want to route my stuff through their service. And using Immich through their tunnel would be very slow.

I finally figured out how to publish my stuff using an external VPS that's doing several things:

• being a OpenVPN server
• being a cert server for OpenVPN certs
• being a reverse proxy using nginx with certbot

Then my servers at home just connect to the VPS as VPN clients so there's a direct tunnel between the VPS and the home servers.

Now when I have an app running on 8080 on my home server, I can set up nginx so that the domain points to the VPS public IPv4 and IPv6 and that one routes the traffic through the VPN tunnel to the home server and it's port using the IPv4 of the VPN tunnel. The clients are configured to have a static IPv4 inside the VPN tunnel when connecting to the VPN server.

Took me several years to figure out but resolved all my issues.

I think it’s more flexible. Also, due to the databases just being normal files you can sync them with syncthing between your devices.

In my case I run a NAS at home on which they’re stored so I don’t need to sync them. I just open them directly from the NAS.

I fully agree. GrapheneOS also just received an update which allows to use Android Auto. The only thing I know of that's not working under GrapheneOS is therefore Google Pay which is okay for me. This software combined with the Hardware is awesome.

You can self host Ente. That's what I'm doing. Basically 40 TB currently on my own server for me and my family for free (besides hardware, time and of course electricity).

https://help.ente.io/self-hosting/

It makes Threads less attractive for people using it because they „can follow people from Mastodon too“. So maybe through that a few people will decide to register in the Fediverse on any other platform rather than using Threads for it. If we only get a few people with that I’m fine with it tbh.

It's not a front end for Lemmy but it's a website that you can use to find new communities over several instances. It's called Lemmy Explorer.

Yes I know about AppFlowy and also about Anytype. However AppFlowy feels off for some reason and not as stable. Anytype feels pretty good but it has the issue that you can't store and sync more than I think 1 GB of data. You could self host a sync server but that's extra complicated with that software for some reason. So it's not really a good alternative either. :/

Downloaded it and I love it!

DuckDuckGo

Well it looks like nowadays they have public issues in their repo which seems like the authors decision and opinion changed. I think both ways are valid ways.

I don't even think the CLI stuff and so on is an issue. The main reason people don't use Linux is because it's simply not pre-installed everywhere as Windows is. The same reason many people use Edge on Windows and don't install Firefox etc. The average user just uses it as it is and doesn't tinker around.

Installed Linux on my grandmother's computer some years ago and she was working with it fine because it was the first time of her using a computer and she learned it that way. For she Linux was was for other people Windows is. She didn't had any issues installing software via apt etc. after getting it explained and teached a few times.

But a user who just uses a system as it is and who is used to Windows will always dislike Linux. I dislike Windows because I find it complicated in many parts. I used Linux and sometimes MacOS for my whole life besides Windows Vista as a child.

I'd say in general this would be Bonfire but it's still in active development and not yet ready to run stable as a public instance.

An actually good alternative to Notion for Linux.

For me I personally decided to block it because I made a poll and most of my users decided to block it. Also, after 24 hours we can see that moderation is not that good which is why I’d defederate from it as from any other instance that doesn’t match with the rules of my own server at all. But that is really the good thing about the Fediverse. Being that flexible.

Won't take that long anymore until it's in the official specs and other clients integrate it I guess, too

"I stop at 2:59" lmao

And adds literally built into basic system components...

Which ones? Haven't experienced any app that doesn't work with GrapheneOS. Even my banking apps work. Only thing that doesn't work is Google Pay.

Android Auto is supported. Payments are the only thing holding me back currently. But that's not something the developers of GrapheneOS can change unfortunately.

Fully agree. That's also the main reason I am using Notion even though it's not FOSS, not encrypted etc.

I was fine using Obsidian (even though it's not FOSS either, but you own your data) but I can't figure out a good way to track books and quotes plus my opinion about them while querying them the same way it works in the database with Notion. Dataview is great for many things but doesn't have pagination etc.

Yes, I have tested Logseq and even donate to them monthly. However I don't use it actively. Reason is that I just can't figure out a way to store my quotes and my opinion about them from books the same way I do it in Notion.

Basically I store my quotes like this:

Inside each quote I write my opinion or the summary of the quote in my own words, etc.

And then for the books I have it like this:

And inside each book I have the quotes linked:

So yeah I haven't found any way in Obsidian or Logseq to replicate this structure. It's always something simliar that's not working the same way and feels off and only with tweaks, custom CSS and stuff like that.

Ideally "users" wouldn't only be IT guys but also an average person. Some of my friends use Matrix to message me. They certainly are no developers or have technical IT knowledge. They certainly don't know how to set up a bot. With discord you just add a bot to your server (equivalent to a Matrix Space) and there you go. That's user friendly. Matrix bots work yes. But they are by far not user friendly.

But IRC doesn't really support E2EE in 1:1 chats right? Because that's something very important for me. I don't want to use an app only for public channels I ideally would like to use it for everything. Including messaging the people I know.

The files app has built in ads to push OneDrive to the users. And yes it can be declared as advertising because you can't remove that ad and because MS pays Samsung for it (or gives Samsung benefits for it inside Windows on Samsungs computers).

Besides that there are the same kind of ads in the settings app.

And there's also many components of the OS that push the user into paying money like for fonts or for Always on Displays or lockscreens or whatever else. Those are not direct ads but you could declare them as auch because of the fact that a user gets pushed into micro payments for basic customization of their phone which for me personally is a no go, especially if you pay money for a flagship phone.

Any idea how long it will take (estimated) until you can install GrapheneOS on the upcoming devices after they're released?

Awesome, thank you! That sounds promising.