I can echo the frustrations expressed about social media becoming a necessity as it becomes the primary channel for communication by an institution. Both my university and student dorm use exclusively Discord to communicate events, exams, and general announcements. I don't run Discord on my phone and due to this I have come close to missing several important things, if not for a friend letting me know. I'm not sure what if anything could be done to change this...
I've really enjoyed using PINE64 products. I use the excellent Pinecil soldering iron which is fully open source. I used a PineTime smartwatch until I got it water damaged (rip) which was a ton of fun to use. I have a pair of PineBuds wireless earbuds (default firmware is not open because of proprietary ANC, but last time I checked this is being worked on). I can't speak for their laptops or phones, but I can definitely recommend the devices I do use if you're willing to get involved in the community to work through and fix some of the existing issues.
Can't hurt to do a little self-promotion ey? I recently started writing https://blog.allpurposem.at/minecraft-qr about FOSS stuff I work on and ways I've managed to survive my gamedev degree on Linux. Aiming for one post per month, though my next one is taking a bit longer.
I ran my own Mastodon for a while. While it does work, it takes up a ton of storage (every image and video you see is cached by your own server). It also doesn't work great for viewing stuff like replies and older posts, since backfilling is still not a thing. I ended up just browsing on remote servers instead. A great blog post about this: https://jvns.ca/blog/2023/08/11/some-notes-on-mastodon/
Awesome news! Really miss the tab groups from Chrome, really the only thing haha
I'm stuck in Cloudflare loops as well, been a week or two. It works in "Private" windows so I'm guessing it's an addon. I think it might be either uBO, Privacy Badger, IDCAC (fork), or DecentralEyes.
I play VR on Linux, it works surprisingly well, especially via Wayland. There's an app called Envision that sets up basically everything you need for you. Unlike a few years ago, I had to do no fiddling, it just works.
I am very serious about using Linux exclusively. I have ported/rewritten all of my university's course materials in my past two years of gamedev studies and made them available for others. But the time has come to do an internship and I have yet to find a single studio I could be at while still using Linux. I feel like I reached a dead end tbh
I really, really hope this leads to development of data portability/server migration options. When I set my homeserver up, I chose Synapse as I didn't know about the other servers. Now that I do, and would like to switch away because of Synapse's performance problems and the new CLA stuff, I realize I and all my users are fully locked in, and would have to start from scratch (lose all chats, profiles, etc) to migrate.
I really enjoy it because everything is automatically maximized, but I can always easily put programs next to each other (f.e. my school uses Discord, so I have to have it open next to Matrix). The window rules are also very useful, as I can make Firefox always be on the first workspace, or my terminal always on the third. You can also make certain apps always float so password managers and such still work the same way.
Do you mean Obtainium? I use it to download apps not available on F-Droid, but I can't use it to actually browse/use GitHub. I will clarify in my OP :)
I held on to my Time Steel for so long, but I finally switched to AsteroidOS on a Huawei Watch. No AOD, way too bright with lights off and unreadable in the sun, and have to charge it every night (barely lasts a day). I'm heavily considering going back.
Yep! You can just paste the URL of the blog into your reader (or try https://blog.allpurposem.at/feed/ if that doesn't work).
I'm seeing others recommend the G14 2022 all-AMD one. I have owned this model since it released and use it nearly every day. Despite the performance being pretty okay, it does have its share of deal-breakers which, if I knew them at the time, I would not have bought it:
The laptop itself would be the best Linux experience I've had if not for these issues. The trackpad is excellent and great for Wayland 1:1 gestures, the display and speakers are great, and the battery lasts a good 2-3h with light web browsing.
Thank you so much :D I had a lot of fun with that one; happy you liked it.
I set up Arch manually, following the ArchWiki guide. Over time using it though, I must have made some customizations that were incorrect and caused it to break.
Something I can use to browse GitHub repositories, reply to and create issues, and get notifications for issues on my own repos.
I do too. Envision has an option to install "WiVRn" which I found worked way better than ALVR.
Good to know! I had it for data saving since I was on a metered connection, but that's no longer the case. Will get rid of it. Might still be useful on Android though, no? As for Privacy Badger, I mostly use it for getting rid of embedded widgets like those weird third-party comments on articles and such.
Thanks for the recommendation! Using it now, works great. Do you know whether development ia continued anywhere? It doesn't look to have been updated in many years, but F-Droid doesn't mark it as unmaintained.
This is a good option for most of it, as the bridges seem quite solid. Sadly it won't make up for calls (some courses have extra content in the form of "Discord Stages" which is like a big video call).
Wow yeah, your position sounds awesome. I guess if I were in an indie studio I could be in charge of the engine or like, dev environments. I've found such benefit in doing gamedev on Linux, even if targeting Windows via cross-compiling, it's so much faster and nicer. But what company would be willing to hire an intern to move over their whole workflow... not happening lol.
What does a hosted RSS provider give you over a normal client? I use Nextcloud News (self hosted) but I don't really know the benefit over just using an RSS app on my phone (besides syncing my list I guess).
Thanks, I can't think of it as anything but duke nukem forever now. Your comment made my day.