What difficulties are you finding with it and are you switching from Google? The results are as custom as Google given they haven't scraped your life history so wondering if that's it? I've been using DDG without any issues. About once every 6 months I struggle to find something so try the Google bang but have never found better results. In fact, I was shocked last time how crap the Google results were, just full of AI generated crap and SEO based crap.

To be honest, DDG is also struggling with that now as it's based on Bing. I have been trying a public searxg but not found it very good so far.

Yeah it sounds like Androids aggressive battery helper is causing this.

Is there any benefit to browsing private mode? Its only stopping history on your phone and not websites, so you can just set normal mode to not save history, cookies etc. Private mode is designed to be temporary in stopping your phone recording history and one button to close them all, so its not surprising that it doesn't save tabs, in fact its a feature

I bought a new phone after having the old one for 3 years and as a treat to myself. It was an S22 Ultra. I regret buying it as the improvements are very minor compared to my old phone, and definitely not worth the massive hike in cost.

The camera is better but tbh, I barely notice it as its mostly a few photos for memories. I'm not printing them on canvas or anything so no point really having such high quality photos. Will definitely hold onto this one for as long as i can

Before you go too far into it and spend lots of time, I think most VPS services let you installed a new OS on their admin site so you can start again from scratch. If you're not sure that is the right linux flavour, go for something else more mainstream so you can find lots of support online. Looking at the OS, I'm sure it might be good but I'm also sure you can install all the features very easily yourself, especially if it's just using docker mainly.

I second UFW. I found this guide useful: https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/ufw-essentials-common-firewall-rules-and-commands. You might want to try tailscale as others use it for easily setting up vpn access but not used it myself. Also go for fail2ban or, for more assurance but harder work, try crowdsec too.

You could also use cloudflare dns and add IP and/or country restrictions to block all traffic before it gets to your VPS. I have a country filter and it's crazy how many bots get blocked from all over!

If you are a student with certain schools you can get it for free. I'm doing a part time course at a UK university and they gave it for free, I just had to register using my university email address. I've not taken it up as want to avoid it in favour of libreoffice but will use for coursework on a VM if I really need to.

Guess they try to suck people in so they pay in the future

I switched from keepass to vaultwarden (self hosted bitwarden) and am glad I tried it out as am finding it so much better on all my devices. I definitely recommend giving it a try if you're just looking to tinker with things

One option is to get an IPTV service and use it with an app where you can record the shows on disk (like TiVo I think you guys use, heard that a lot on older TV shows lol). Will only record future shows but tbh, a lot gets repeated on their other channels (https://www.channel4.com/tv-guide).

Using a VPN is another option but I recently couldnt load the app while using a lesser known VPN from within the UK so they seem hot on blocking them.

Another option is rent a cheap VPS from in the UK to act as your own VPN.

All of their shows is on their app, and they have a pretty cheap ad free option if you can figure that out too.

You are amazing, thank you so much! It all worked apart from the last one, which said it needs an output file specified so added -o after a quick search. I really appreciate the quick response to, I got in very quickly but only just managed to respond here.

It's at temporary lights for roadworks, usually when a lane is closed. You need to know where to stop, which might be further back so incoming traffic can get past you

Yes, I have it under a subdomain I own on cloudflare. Then it's behind nginx proxy manager on my server which takes care of the ssl too. I have fail2ban too so consider it enough security for if the user passwords are long enough. You can set minimum lengths if letting others use it, or in my case I helped family set it up and made them have strong passwords.

Like others have said, the apps cache everything locally. I have used it without issues with no mobile Internet (e.g. for my cc pin numbers I store on there when i was out in the country with crap reception). I guess you're more likely to create accounts at home anyway but if you have to when out, it would sync whenever you have it back on the lan.

I have two homepages, one for local and the other for remote (behind nginx and my authentication software). I also have one on a vm i use for testing before deployment. They are different docker containers but don't see why you couldn't have separate ones given they are just websites.

I don't use the docker labels feature so it doesn't really matter to me but can see why you would want this to be implemented if you did. Hopefully they can figure it out.

I have a "local" version with every prod service on. It's only accessible on my home network with a pihole dns resolver. I just add the services manually to the services.yaml file, which doesn't take long at all. I then have a "remote" version which is a much smaller with only services accessible outside my home network and is behind nginx/authentication software/cloudflare. Again, it doesn't take long to add services really. Two different docker compose files, volumes with the settings, and ports makes it work fine for me. I guess depends how often you're adding services.

Do you physically have access to the router? If so, I would figure out the settings it uses that other people notice (wifi settings etc) and just hard reset it. Chances are they just use the basic settings provided anyway.

Is anybody else using the router or just you? If just you, I'd just do what you want to it and reset it when you leave.

Nextcloud aio on docker is pretty easy. You just need to setup the reverse proxy really (i think on port 11000 if i remember correctly). It does come with apache so you could open it directly in your router but guessing you might have other services.

I imported my keepass database into vaultwarden with no issues