PeerTube. It’s a video sharing platform with ActivityPub federation and with peer to peer video sharing like a torrent (it is one I think) which lightens the load on instances. An alternative to YouTube is NEEDED right now. A good way to make it grow is to simply start a channel and post videos. It’s currently very underpopulated. Some YouTube channels such as The Linux Experiment mirror their channels to PeerTube, so if you have a YT channel, mirror it to PeerTube.
Also to me it seems like Matrix could be the messenger of the future, replacing WhatsApp, SMS/calls, and social media DMs.
The general mobile Linux space is also interesting right now. Year of the Linux phone when? It’s not currently fully ready but it’s advancing. Also the FSF announced the LibrePhone initiative so there’ll probably be more advancement.
Nushell - I love that it exists, and I find it a joy to use over other shells - stable and rich enough as a productive driver, and being actively developed towards a stable 1.0
C# - three more days until the next release, which adds only a few useful-to-me extensions, but the existing base, stability, and usefulness are part of its charm
Do you have any beginner-to-intermediate learning resources for nushell?
I have it set up on my system and try dabbling with it every once in a while but it’s so different to my ash muscle memories that I bounce off a little.
I read through much of the docs and the cookbook but every time I actually try to use it for something productive I get tangled in minutiae of some issue or another, mostly around the data piping I think.
Did you have to break through a similar ‘barrier’ or did it instantly click for you when approaching nushell originally?
Wargus for sure. In the age of darkness! In the age of darkness! Why do you keep touching me?
My own.
PostmarketOS, I have an fp3 I want to install it on
I’m also watching the latest 1v1 tournament of Beyond All Reason, double heavy mines are terrifying
RISC-V by far.
Oh yes, we’re gonna need it for the battle ahead, the battle for freedom
i hope so much that somehow this will lead usable non propertary public designs too
Plasma Bigscreen. I would love to replace my Apple TVs with something more open.
Funnily enough, I never managed to get big screen working on a raspberry pi. I ended up flashing a broken build of Android TV to it instead
I like I2P. Such a cool concept and there are plenty of services that can be built upon it. Most famous for anonymous torrenting I suppose, but it can do so much more.
Linux of course, it’s been headlining lately in terms of improvements particularly on the gaming front, but also FreeBSD based on how quickly it’s been moving in terms of improvements on the general desktop front, FreeBSD is at the point where it’s a viable third option on the desktop if you’re not gaming, although that’s assuming you’re running its
CURRENTbranch since that’s where the latest development happens.By a wide margin the many different projects for an open source phone OS. From GrapheneOS to PostmarketOS, from Ubuntu Mobile to Plasma Mobile.
I am sick and tired of corporations telling me how I can use my phone. I am sick and tired of corporations deciding what apps I can install, from where, and what data they are allowed to collect. I am done with enshittification and the gradual disappearing of all useful information, either behind a paywall, or replaced by monetized content.
The last straw was when Google Maps decided to replace the “gas station on the route” feature that sent you to the cheapest gas station to some other logic it didn’t disclose, but that stinks of affiliate preference.
Thoughts on /e/OS? Been thinking of giving fairphone 6 a go.
/e/OS is just another android rom, and unlike calyxOS or grapheneOS, /e/OS isn’t very privacy focused. There’s some weird stuff regarding a hidden “license id” and some of their services rely in openAI. You might as well just use a “real” privacy-first android rom if you’re trying to get away from tech giants, their tracking and closed source software.
That’s interesting. Where can I learn more about the lack of safety features and the connection to OpenAI? Seems pretty surprising, especially considering they tout safety and data privacy as their primary selling point.
Can someone ELI5, why the phone landscape is so different from PCs? Why can I take a Linux iso and install it on basically any x86 pc from the last 25 years, but if I want to install anything on my phone, I need an image specially tailored for my specific model.
PCs have a BIOS/UEFI that provides hardware discovery and abstraction to the OS, while phones lack that and need the OS to know what hardware to expect.
20 years ago when the predecessors to modern smartphone hardware were being designed, there probably would have been meaningful costs to adding that kind of flexibility. There probably wouldn’t today, but there’s also no motivation for phone makers to do it.
Absolutely, fully agree here. An Open Source widely applicable phone OS would benefit millions of people. Possibly billions.
The frustrating part of this is how much of the smartphone world is dependent on companies playing along.
I have a Venmo business account I use from time to time. I tried to log in on it from my laptop yesterday to check my balance. I was met with this:
We used to complain that apps are just worse versions of websites, but increasingly, you’re being forced to install an app just to do basic things.
Is there any way to guarantee every app will be available on a linux phone? We can grab APKs at the moment off sketchy websites, but I don’t know how much longer that’s going to work after Google kills sideloading.
atm, if you’re using Waydroid, you can use Aurora Store/ Droid. No shady websites needed!
Can you not just log in on a mobile browser in desktop only mode?
No. This is literally from a desktop browser. That feature is only available on the app.
Ugh. Fuck those people. That should be a crime.
It really sucks, but at least there are alternatives to venmo. I’ve heard that in Europe, you’re require to have an app to show your Id or use the bank or some such.
Thoughts on GNU TALER??
Is it what we should all be using? What are its flaws and shortcomings?
Nah. In Europe, Venmo is just not a thing, because bank transfers are free and fast. IDs are a plastic card, just like almost everywhere else.
Banking apps are a bit more problematic, because most people (and probably banks, idk) prefer if you use those not just if you have a smartphone and want to do banking on it, but also as a second factor for when you want to log in on your desktop.
There’s plenty of alternatives (TAN readers, for example), but none as simple or seamless, unfortunately. But bank websites are fully featured (and usually more so than the app, actually).
You use an IBAN to send money. Yeah technically it’s your bank, but it’s a digital transfer without a middleman.
You can even put notes on it to pay invoices.
Let alone open source!
Same!!!
I have a few open source audio projects in the works myself right now. Aside from my own stuff, Fish shell has been my latest addiction.
I’m going to have to say OpenStreetMap, it’s always going to have a place in my heart.
Are there any mapping apps thats not google maps that has traffic data? I haven’t looked in a while, but last time I did it was a ‘no’ and I’m just shocked this hasn’t really been solved. Either by highjacking google maps data, or using local news data to fill in areas of maps with heavy traffic etc. There’s gotta be some way to solve this.
Like I get it, projects can’t just wholesale use google maps data, they’ll get shut down, but there’s no side loaded plugin you can load to use Google’s traffic data and the project just kind of winks in their github page and says ‘we don’t encourage anyone to use this plugin…’?
Magic Earth. Sometimes it crashes and gives confusing voice instructions. But it has traffic data and is therefore my daily driver.
https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Magic_Earth
Not
owned by HaliburtonI am now wondering if these are two different things both named magic earth?
Yeah. My bad. Not owned by Halliburton. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_Earth_Inc.
I am super hyped about Arrs. I have configured a stack and yet to activate it. Waiting til I can install Raspberry pi with vpn in another country for an endless downloads.
All the Arr stuff is working really great already. Whats going to happen in future? Can’t wait!
Other than that, Immich is dope.
Best answer: Blender by far, Blender is ON FIRE right now, so many exciting things are happening.
The answer my heart gives: Beyond All Reason (my heart really loves watching robots and tanks blow each other up in scifi battles).
I just recently found out of Beyond all Reason and it looks so promising. I saw some guy on youtube commenting a few games.
I hope it catches on, not many big RTS games nowadays, and this one is open source too.
BAR and the spring/recoil engine have been in development for 20 years, it is a really impressive community and I have zero doubt BAR will grow massively in popularity, it doesn’t just look cool in action, the moment to moment gameplay has been tweaked and refined for years and years while sticking with a coherent design vision. Not many other games can say that in the RTS genre or otherwise and you can feel the difference immediately after you get a handle on the combat tactics.
Blender is a contender for the best go-to example in the history of open-source software. It’s easy for any layperson to understand what it is (unlike, say, Linux), and it’s genuinely better than the for-profit competition in a lot of aspects. There’s nothing else like it.
It’s been growing for decades, and its community is the best.
I’m really not in that space so I only get to watch from the sidelines, but I’ve always been in awe of Blender.
Fuuuck, gotta try to learn it again. I grew up on 3dsMax which was like the king of 3D in video game dev, and blender is/was just so different. Must be some simple tutos out there now how to make millimeter precise stuff & boolean operations on volumes for my 3D printing…
The good thing with open source is they can’t just screw you over with new workflows or other (looking at you Unity, degrading float point resolution after 2.6).
Must be some simple tutos out there now how to make millimeter precise stuff & boolean operations on volumes for my 3D printing…
Sounds like you need CAD software instead of 3D modeling software. Very different!
FreeCAD exists and is FOSS but IMO is not very user-friendly. Then again I never seriously tried using it or watching tutorials or anything, so this might be unfair. Give it a shot I suppose!
The few times I needed to design something in CAD, I had success with Fusion 360. It’s easy to use and gets the job done, but it’s kinda gross with its confusing (mandatory?) cloud integration.
You can ask in 3D printing circles what CAD software people use and recommend, they’ll certainly know better than me! If you’re up for giving FreeCAD a shot, I’ll be happy to hear your experience with it. I’d really like to know if it’s better than I give it credit for.
Edit: seems like a lot has changed since I last checked out FreeCAD. Version 1.0 was released and I’m sure it’s better since I tried it. So forget what I said, it’s probably good!
Thanks, but I have already tried out freecad and also that fusion 360 IIRC it was very nice on paper, making planes everywhere :-), but as you say very different from what I know! I just need to use basic shapes, say extract a spline, and combine/cut with boolean operators, and then fine tune the mesh and its vertices itself, well it is how I have always done it, not engineer worthy but it works for me…
Take a peek at the CAD Sketcher add-on. https://www.cadsketcher.com/
I used 3dsmax a lot around 25ish years ago, and even though I pirated it, I remember it costing a fortune.
After getting back into 3D printing I needed something with which to do modelling, and as I’m exclusively on Linux I decided to dive into Blender.
My conclusion is that blender today is better than 3dsmax way back. I just need to translate allof my learned 3dsmax terms and techniques into blender.
BAR 4 life!
Meshtastic. I don’t use it yet, but it is something interesting that I’ve kinda been low-key obsessed about.
Eventually, telecoms are gonna require IDs, internet service will require IDs. Computers will have DRMs and “AI” scanning your device to censor stuff.
Meshtashtic could be the backbone of a new “internet”. One that’s free from corporate control. We could build a forum on top of it.
Doubt that it would be Meshtastic, it is inherently not built for internet levels of bandwidth. But I can see a future where you have intranets that are free and community driven with something like Meshtastic with higher bandwidth and you still pay for an ISP that can give you access to the full internet (because nothing currently can replace underwater optic fiber)
Lol, I’m pretty deep into meshtastic but there is no chance that LoRa could be the backbone of a new internet. Bandwidth is far too low
And Lora is by itself proprietary isn’t it?
Correct, I do believe there is an open source alternative but I haven’t done any reading on it
Who needs Bandwidth
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⣀⠤⣚⣻⣥⣴⣶⣶⣯⡕⢄⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠔⣡⣾⣿⡿⠟⠛⠛⠛⠻⠛⠻⣦⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⢸⣚⣿⣿⡏⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⣿⡆⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠈⣿⣿⣯⠞⣻⡆⠀⢀⣀⣀⣀⣀⣼⣿⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⢠⣿⡿⢣⡾⢻⣷⣾⣿⣿⣿⡟⠻⣿⣿⡆⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠈⣿⡇⢸⣼⠯⢿⣯⡙⢋⣡⣄⣀⣈⣿⡇⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⣿⡧⠤⠉⠉⠙⡦⢙⣿⣯⣿⣿⣿⣿⠃⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⢀⡿⢷⠀⠀⠀⠀⠁⣼⣿⣿⣿⣶⣶⡏⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⣀⣴⡏⠀⠸⡄⠀⠀⠀⠀⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣯⡅⠒⡄⢀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠾⠛⢋⣠⣡⡆⠀⣳⡀⠀⠀⢠⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣇⠀⠀⣆⣈⣗⣄⠀ ⠒⢿⡶⢾⣽⣧⣼⠁⠈⠉⢚⣿⣿⠏⠋⠘⢻⣿⣿⣿⣤⣤⣽⠘⣿⣿⡦
when you can just send ASCII Memes?(Roll Safe, aka: “Guy Taps Forehead” Meme)
🤣 how many chars is this? Would it make it past the 200 character limit?
Reticulum would be much closer as it supports many different forms of networking
I love these kind of things too.
