oh, of course, sorry if I came off harsh. it’s just, I escaped Gnome’s gigantic title bars and useless buttons in it occupying like half the screen, and couldn’t wait to turn it all off in Konsole, so I’m kinda baffled with anyone having them on. just FYI, check out the keyboard shortcuts for Konsole and you’ll boost your productivity considerably.

edit: this one’s mine. there are many like it but this one’s mine.

for what purpose? if it’s just bypassing your ISP, a free VPS + wireguard and you’re golden.

first off chill out, Jason Bourne.

the threat mitigation is handled based on your threat model, not on a “defend all bases against anyone” approach. once you answer what your specific model is, then you can start building your defences. if your threat model is spouse looking through your shit, a password is more than adequate. if it’s the border nazis CBP, you go for encryption at rest. if it’s a toddler walking around the house smashing stuff, none of those will do you any good.

there are people with complex threat models but I doubt they post on lemmy and they def don’t scour the classifieds for used Thinkpads. the idea that there are threat actors out there infecting random devices and then see what they catch is… def possible, but highly unlikely.

you’re perfectly safe using a 2nd hand enterprise-class laptop, like a Thinkpad, Elitebook, or Latitude, wiped clean. those are tough and resilient devices built for road warriors for everyday, heavy use. the good thing is, they get periodically swapped out for new models, so they can be had for cheap, and a huge majority of those haven’t seen a lick of any significant use.

those devices are worlds apart from the laptops you’re advocating buying (I assume you mean the consumer-class models) and definitely way cheaper, like a couple times over, while being infinitely expandable and serviceable with cheap, widely available and cross-generation compatible parts.

the final part is compartmentalisation and fungibility of devices. keep the minimum stuff you need on there, assume they will break, get lost or stolen, so encryption is mandatory, and have a tried and tested backup and restore procedure in place.

I’ve noted the product families specifically and what I wrote applies to them only, not every used device everywhere.

I’m sorry, I gotta - you have the menu on AND the button bar? like, why? you click on those things? you got your screen real-estate on a sale, what?

I do. I have a daily folder, weekly and reread, apart from the usual categories for long-term storage. “daily” gets the current stuff, “weekly” gets opened once a week, and “reread” is for stuff I read but didn’t really absorb. thanks to firefox sync I can read all of that form tablet or desktop or whatever.

stole it from Cory Doctorow: https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/25/today-in-tabs/

in the morning I middle-click on “daily” and it opens em all up - lemmy, mastodon, weather, stuff I’d like to buy, etc. and you go through them; got way easier with the new vertical bar + middle click for close the ones you done with.

look for docker-compose + whatyouwant specifically, it’s way more straightforward. once you have one set up, it get easier adding on different software.

this warrants a TON of upvotes, are y’all for real? THIS is what it looks like to the potential converts and I deal with them daily.

the single, giganticest, most glaring issue in every distro and DE is the complete absence of sane defaults as this dude demonstrates, his comedic chops and edge-case issues aside.

converts nowadays come from the hyper-polished world of Android and iOS devices, where you turn it on and it works. the idea that the average user needs complex setup and training and is faced with these cryptic sysadm-intended-for error messages delegates it to the narrow userbase it has, and it can be so much better.

not to rain on your parade, but F5 is a downgrade from 7a in practically every aspect.

I’m aware of the glued shut aspect and there are solutions for that nowadays. getting a SDM870 and better SoC for under $100 with tons of RAM and storage, for me is more than a worthwhile trade off.

on the other hand, it’s perfectly understandable if you don’t want to dick around with all that and/or want to support Fairphone’s mission.

I too repair my phones when they break and I haven’t had any issues replacing batteries, one camera assembly (was supposed to be an upgrade - wasn’t) and twice the screen with assembly on budget phones. in fact, before I buy them (always used) I check youtube for replacement videos for battery and screen. all replacements done with chinese parts, ultra-cheap and locally available.

I don’t know about the fair sourced part, I guess I’m too jaded to consider that an issue so I’ll concede that’s important to some people. I figure I’m doing everyone a service by repurposing a discarded 5 year old phone.

I’ve managed to listen to this doofus for a couple of minutes and then promptly added him to the ignore list (thanks Freetube!). whether he’s a scammer or just deluded, I wouldn’t trust or use anything that had his fingers in or near it.

if his general vibe of snake-oil salesman doesn’t put you off, putting his name on the thing should. hard pass.

the painless way would be to format the ntfs partition as ext4 or btrfs and mount it locally via fstab (e.g. to /home/user/data); windows is gone and you can use the space. you can search on how to the two things.

the deleting and resizing of the partition is a hit/miss scenario and there’s a number of ways you can mess up your install, most of them easily recoverable but that’s not something you want to waste your productive time on. then, when you eventually upgrade (to a larger disk, new laptop, new OS, whathaveyou) you’ll copy/move your data over and be rid of this abomination.

I’m curious, what’s your use case that you need that kind of a phone? just visited their site, says $550 for a somewhat mediocre phone. it’s repairable, but with expensive, fairphone-only sold parts. the OS on it needs removing, as stated multiple times ITT.

a 5 year old phone has comparable tech specs, costs like a 10th of that, you can open it and replace battery and parts. you also need to flash an alternative OS, so what justifies a 10-fold price hike?

edit:

I’m running several opensource alternatives for clients (rocketchat, prosody, matrix) and I’ve transitioned privately from telegram and XMPP to matrix. the pushback from users is immense, they find every possible reason and excuse to stick with the messengers they’re used to and use “the new stuff” for the bare minimum.

privately it’s easy easier, that’s the only way you can get ahold of me, so if you need/want me, that’s where I am at. for a short while tried to make it work with signal, but a) the phone number thing is a deal breaker (usernames get me only halfway there) and b) I switch and use multiple devices often and that thing is downright hostile towards people who own/use > 2 devices.

bear in mind, I’m in a dictatorial position. they have to do what I say and even with that, it’s an uphill battle. it doesn’t help that the stuff they’re now forced to use has subpar to downright dogshit UX.

the new, shiny, superawesome, superfast element x… is crap. I thought Signal was crap - this is another level. I don’t mean for me, it’s crap from the point of casual users, they are coming from the super polished world of telegram and imessage and twitter and friends and everything about this is off-putting. a lot of them need help setting this up, especially if it’s a multi-device scenario.

the immediate future looks bleak and I don’t see an important development on the horizon that would change any of this. but, that’s how telegram spread, early adopters switching to it and promoting it and dragging normies along. let’s hope for a repeat.

deleted by creator

a good point. while I appreciate all the usual parables to explain the issue, to me it’s quite simple. namely, me and the evildoers have a fundamental disagreement on the concept of “whose shit is my shit?” the moment their actions indicate it’s theirs, I am in active resistance mode.

I have a ton of the bottom three laptops, wanna trade for the shitty one up top?

My thinkpad is also light in the connectivity area and I absolutely adore the $30 dock I got for it. Click the laptop in place and LAN, displays, audio, power, keyboard, mouse, external storage are connected instantly; if I had to connect each one separately, multiple times per day, I’d go insane.

first off, you’re not alone out there because standard 1080p screens are often ran at 150% which is equal if not worse to your use case.

gnome is downright abhorrent about their gigantic, space wasting UI elements. moving to plasma was like gaining 30% display area. like, the insanely large title bar in terminal, with huge buttons in it. who clicks on stuff in a terminal?! and does it so often it warrants those things present as default?

they are an edge case and as such out of scope of this writ. I know it works with the mentioned hardware, but I don’t know what the exact intricacies are (like running ROCm drivers with AMD graphics) as I don’t have first hand experiences with it; my users run office and comms apps predominantly.

wayland is default on fedora for 5+ years, similarly on ubuntu and is plenty battle-tested and more than ready for everyday use, edge cases notwithstanding.

there’s an argument to be had against every major switch in recent years (systemd, pipewire, etc). progress isn’t achieved by waiting until there’s full feature parity, it’s by forcing it onto users and working out the issues in vivo; those who won’t deal with it can keep using the old stuff, either by using conservative distros or ripping out the new stuff and replacing it.

be that as it may, the point of the post is directing converts to the easiest, safest, and most straightforward path through this scary wonderland, and preventing them from wasting time on “true scotsman” endeavors, not changing the habits of seasoned veterans.

I’ve addressed it in another comment; it’s not a big deal as such, but the result is a huge distraction for people who just want to open their laptops in the morning and start working and I hear about it constantly. the standard install has a barrage of notifications to update this and that and it wants to restart for every tiny little thing, be it necessary or not. by separating all “apps” and putting in a systemd timer that auto-updates all flatpaks, all user-facing apps are always the latest version and then the system stuff can get updated bi-weekly, when they eventually reboot.

edit: this is them, to the letter - https://redd.it/1gyirfw