EDIT: realized this was for desktop, so removed the original list of mostly android apps. Here's my go to desktop apps:

Lollypop - music player
Invoiceninja - open source invoicing service
Meld - file/folder comparison
Librewolf - hardened Firefox
Joplin - notes
QEMU/Virt-Manager - virtualization for that one windows app you still need
KeepassXC - password management
Element-desktop - Matrix client
Gparted - no fuss partition management
Lutris - game launcher that works with epic games (among many others)
PDFarranger - best PDF management I've found on Linux Soundconverter - easy to use file converter
Restic - backups
Fdupes - duplicate file finder
Freetube - privacy respecting YouTube client
Paperless-ngx - very well built electronic document storage. Must be run as a server.

You're right there. I was pretty psyched when their calendar came out and originally I did like the many services, one source approach. I've since switched to a more compartmentalized setup, and it seems like those of us in this camp are just a vocal minority with too many opinions 😄. It is pretty awesome that more and more people I know are using proton's email service, let alone just understanding the value of privacy respecting communication apps.

Proton is making me more uneasy with each of these acquisitions. I don't like companies that get to big 😅.

I'm using Joplin notes with a self-hosted Joplin sync server. Excellent customizability through plug ins and CSS templates that you can find on the Joplin forum.

I looked at standard notes back in the day. The one benefit it had over Joplin was that the notes could be encrypted on the client devices, while with Joplin you can only encrypt the notes on the sync server target. Other than that though, Joplin checked many more boxes, personally I can't recommend it enough. I use markdown for formatting, I can't speak to the quality of the WYSWYG editors functionality.

I thought this was a really good point regarding situations where a github issue or other channel of communication is being used to pester or make demands of a maintainer. I hadn't thought about it from this perspective.

Let the maintainer deal with it publicly, and reach out privately if you are concerned about the situation. Otherwise, even if you are concerned about burnout or the maintainer overworking, you may wind up advocating for a threat actor to become a maintainer of something.

Nice, I haven't tried that termux widget yet. Here's a Lemmy community just for android home screens if you're interested: !c/android_homescreens@lemmy.ml

This is awesome, thank you. It's a bit hit or miss, but the site Project Gutenberg has a lot of obscure texts in the public domain converted to various eBook formats and available for free. I'm going to scan through and see what they have that's discussed on this site.

Checked on mobile, doesn't happen for me. I'll try on my desktop Arch setup.

I think its a reflection of the writers more than anything. Trek writers usually try to pull their ideas from current political and sociological issues. AI and genetic engineering (which I think is thinly veiled commentary on gender) are simply the current issues of our time. It is odd that they've chosen the federation to be the problem in the recent shows though. In older trek the federation was always the ones to stand up for the cause and the conflict came from worlds they visited. Of course, that's probably linked to the same idea as the AI/genetics, people are much more frustrated and disillusioned with western government these days and the writers are no doubt exploring that.

So there will probably be changes in the federations stance that are two steps beyond what we see happening in the world around us. Trek has always tried to lead people in a moral/philosophical direction.

Techlore, The New Oil, and The Linux Experiment. All three have YouTube channels as well.

From a recovering distro-hopping addict, there's two ways to dip your toes in to the various Linux experiences:

1. When you install your distro, partition a separate /home folder that is distinct from your root and boot partitions. There are many good walkthroughs on YouTube on doing this process, it's fairly simple. Once you do that you can keep your home folder intact as you install different distros over the top. Just make sure to mark you /home folder each time and don't format it during install.

2. Like another commenter said, try distrobox. It will allow you to test out the various distro bases pretty conveniently. Another similar option is learning how to set up virtual machines. Again, sounds more difficult than it is. There's many good videos that walk you through the process.

Aside from the mechanics of testing out different options, I would recommend KDE as a desktop environment. Cinnamon and Gnome are both flexible, but do feel more restricting than I like. You can customize nearly every element of KDE, I really like it.

Really, most distros are fairly similar, aside from using different package managers and having different sets of software pre-installed. The desktop environment is where you'll experience the most user facing differences.

If you like to tinker, make your way over to an arch based distro at some point. I've really enjoyed endeavourOS, but you will need to mess with config files to get your printer working and things like that.

Getting a functional nextcloud server. I self-hosted mine, but there's lots of VPS options that are pretty easy to set up.

It's basically a drop in replacement for the majority of proprietary productivity suites (i.e. Google drive, onedrive and icloud). One service covers a lot of bases.

Absolutely.

I used to buy every book physically (perhaps due to the whole being a child of the 20th century thing), but have started relying more on epub these days. Despite that, there is something really meaningfull about simply having a shelf of literature that has moved me and changed my life in some way. Through the course of the day I find myself noticing the titles on my book shelf and recalling that period of my life and the impact it had on me. You just don't get that kind of memory connection with a digital book that you never see unless you open your reader to intentionally re-read it.

Also, I have never re-read any of my ebooks. I have however found myself moved to re-read my physical books 3, 4 or even more times. Each time they take on a new significance. I'm sure this is due to the physical presence that they have in my life, and books that I only have digitally just don't seem to have that same effect (with a few notable exceptions.)

Like one of the other comments mentioned though, do make sure to get a copy of the book that has a visually interesting and tasteful cover/spine. Publishers don't always do well with the cover and that can be unpleasant.

Edit: one more thing: being able to reference certain page numbers for quotes and knowledge bases is really valuable. This is really only feasible in a physical book as the page numbers in ebooks shift higher or lower depending on your chosen font size. If you never change your font that may not be an issue, but with non standard font rendering in ebooks and possible device transfers, any notes that involve specific page numbers can be made entirely useless very quickly.

Joplin has a sharing feature that allows multiple user editing of an entire notebook.

The downside is that both individuals need to have Joplin installed and either have Joplin cloud accounts or a self-hosted installation of Joplin server, which in either case may be more effort than is worth it for you.

I hear you man. That exact thing happened to me back with the Pixel 2.

You know, I've heard of people having success getting the carriers to remove the lock on the bootloader sometimes. It may be worth calling Verizon's support line and asking them to do it.

Here is a good debloater that should allow you to remove some of the cruft from Google. It utilizes Shizuku which is a fantastic tool for accomplishing stuff without rooting your phone. I know I've seen debloating guides on YouTube that walk you through the stuff you can get rid of.

Something else that could really help is using a DNS blocking service to filter out requests to ad/tracking domains. I use NextDNS right now because it has some really powerful filters that are very easy to setup. Here's a video that goes over setting it up. Pi-Hole or Adguard are self-hosted options, I used Pi-Hole for awhile and liked it, but switched in order to simplify my digital life a bit.

Absolutely, there are some really good ways to mitigate the data flow even if you can't stop it entirely. The OS is a big deal, but I think the most fundamental change to make is the apps and services you use.

You've probably already done that to a degree, but see if there are more changes you can make.

Alternativeto is an excellent way to explore your options, but also the techlore and the new oil youtube channels are fantastic resources for limiting privacy leaks.

I'll post a few debloater apps that I've run across when I get home too, I haven't used them but I know there are options for removing some of the tracking elements of stock android.

I actually haven't found much value in his videos lately. I followed him during the time that he was covering more informational topics like android ROMs and a smattering of how to walkthroughs. Haven't seen anything like that in awhile. The few I have watched have basically been news bites about some event in the tech world. I guess those are OK, but still not super helpful in discovering new tech or services.

Now that I think back, he did do a video on how to switch from sudo to doas in Linux, which was awesome. One or two videos like that are enough to keep me monitoring the channel.

This is the way. Great youtube client for desktop.

I've looked for this off and on over the years and haven't found anything I really liked. The closest I came to it was Youmail. It isn't an open source app, which is a bummer, but it seems to be a (at least sort of) privacy respecting company. I remember reading their privacy policy at one point and not seeing anything terrible in it.

Haha, I like it

Desktop - thebox
Server - thecloud
Phone - thewand
Tablet - theportal
Home assistant - theoracle

Not too creative, but it works.