I don’t consider HMD Global phones, because they don’t allow unlocking the bootloader.

I actually prefer Krita over GIMP, even for photo editing. I can’t stand how bad stylus support with GIMP is and I much prefer Krita’s UI. I wish Krita would focus on areas beyond drawing more, as Krita is quite close to being a good program for editing photos in my opinion.

I have never used Adobe’s or Affinity’s products though, as they aren’t available for Linux and are therefore not an option for me. I would probably consider them, but those companies apparently decided that I am not worth their business.

I think darktable is one of the better alternatives for Adobe software.

A couple of years ago, I took a Lightroom workshop and did all the tasks with darktable. I was amazed at how similar it actually is and I managed to keep up with the workshop, even though I didn’t use darktable nor Lightroom before.

I suggest subscribing to YouTube via RSS (yes, YouTube still has an RSS feed for channels and playlists). I’ve been doing this for years and it works great. You can use your RSS reader or an add-on like Livemarks to discover the feed.

If you subscribe via RSS, you can then easily substitute the feed URL for any other platform, if the creator happens to upload their content to platforms other than YouTube.

Even though the videos are hosted on different platforms, you still have a single feed in a single location with all new videos thanks to RSS. You’re also able to manage a “watch later” list with your RSS reader.

Winget is able to install applications from multiple sources, including the Microsoft Store. You can see a list of all configured sources by executing winget source list. For regular applications a community repository is preconfigured.

If you would execute my example command, Firefox would get installed from the community repository. You should be able to use the following command to install the Microsoft Store version of Firefox: winget install 9NZVDKPMR9RD

9NZVDKPMR9RD is the package id of the Microsoft Store version of Firefox. You can either get it by executing winget search firefox or you can get it from the URL of the Microsoft Store entry.

Haha, glad to hear that you discovered winget through my post!

It was, in my opinion, long overdue for Microsoft to introduce a package manager for Windows, but now that it is there, you can actually use it for all kinds of useful stuff. E. g. I would, if I was using Windows, create a PowerShell script to install my software all at once for whenever I reinstall my computer. This makes reinstalling a lot faster and I have documentation about the programs I had installed before. ;)

It is not mandatory in the EU if your site only uses cookies that are technically necessary. One only has to display a prompt for cookies that go beyond that, i. e. tracking cookies.

No need to open a web browser to install another one on Windows 10 and 11.

All one has to do is open a terminal, type winget install Mozilla.Firefox and hit Enter. ;)

Pro tip: To update all software on a Windows computer you can type winget upgrade --all and hit Enter (especially useful for computers from family or friends with LibreOffice or Java versions from the stone age …).

Obligatory PeerTube link: https://video.blender.org/w/m7eJZjgGSNGV1eqCQW262G ;)

Personally I don’t like replying to bots. It feels like talking to a wall. There is no real person behind the bot account I’m replying to and I will never have a discussion with this account. Isn’t having discussions the point of social media though? Otherwise I could just read my RSS feeds …

I’ve therefore selected to not show me bot posts on Lemmy and try to hide bots from Mastodon by filtering for keywords, such as “bot” or “twitter feed”, in profiles.

Maybe Geary is what you are looking for?

That’s actually an issue with most Debian-/Ubuntu-based distributions, as Debian/Ubuntu still does not package QGnomePlatform. This is preinstalled on Fedora and makes Qt apps, like Kate, look nice on GNOME.

If I remember correctly, Flatpak apps from Flathub are unaffected by this Debian/Ubuntu issue, as Flathub includes QGnomePlatform in their runtimes.

For me, as a car enthusiast, this has been a turning point in my enthusiasm for cars. It has become very easy for me to accept electric vehicles and strive for less car dependency, since the EU mandated driver assistance systems and a bunch of other technology in new vehicles. For American readers: In the US there is an agreement between the NHTSA and car manufacturers to include such technology in all new cars by 2022-09.

I really dislike technology that is made to correct and monitor my behaviour and I am not keen on spending lots of money on a car that is filled with technology I don’t want (accident data recorder, intelligent speed assist, lane keeping assist, etc.). Apart from that, I haven’t seen one vehicle where the driver assistance systems aren’t annoying or even dangerous (e. g. the lane keeping system steering towards a ditch / wall on narrow roads, etc.). And to make matters worse: You can’t permanently turn those systems off, if they don’t work as advertised, as in the EU it is mandatory for such systems to re-activate themselves whenever you start the vehicle and the deactivation has to be a multi-step process (as far as I remember).

Nowadays my transport-related interests are therefore mainly complete streets / 15-minute cities / public transport, cycling, affordable electric cars and classic, non-digital vehicles. I no longer wish to own any expensive modern car(s) and I don’t care much for internal combustion engines anymore. Instead I value cities more that allow me to live car-free and the only vehicles I still want to own are classic ones.

Using and expanding public transport is much better for the environment (climate, pollution, urbanism, etc.) than making cars even more attractive by making them drive autonomously.

Fedora Silverblue or Kinoite, as you will reliably be able to update the system, even after half a year of not using it.

Updates are atomic, so either an update is installed successfully or no changes to your system have been done whatsoever, there is no in-between state (i. e. broken system) possible.

Don’t be too sad, it wouldn’t work well with reverse-DNS notation anyway. ;)

It would be nice, if you could incorporate those missing locations into OpenStreetMap once you come across them. Afterwards everyone else will benefit from your contributions, as they don’t have to lookup the location on Google Maps anymore. :)

OsmAnd actually has a map editing plugin. Another great application for improving OpenStreetMap is Street Complete. It is a good way to kill some time while waiting somewhere with incomplete OSM data. ;)

I would actually advise anyone not to buy phones where the manufacturer doesn’t allow bootloader unlocking (e. g. HMD) or where the phone gets permanently damaged/modified once you unlock the bootloader (e. g. Samsung). The only power a consumer holds is purchasing power, so the more people refuse to buy locked-down hardware, the more incentive there is to offer hardware with unlockable bootloaders.

My personal recommendation would be Pixel phones, due to excellent GrapheneOS support, but their regional availability seems to be limited and the quality of the hardware could be a lot better (e. g. the battery of my Pixel 5 failed just after the warranty period; luckily iFixit provides genuine replacements and I managed to replace it myself, but this replacement wasn’t easy and it has become even more difficult with newer Pixel phones).

I use GrapheneOS on my Pixel 5, even though I didn’t want to use Custom ROMs anymore.

I run it mainly because of sandboxed Play Services (i. e. Google services running as a user application with much less capabilities, instead of a system application, like with the factory image) and the additional functionality, which includes the ability to revoke network and sensor permissions for any app.

One of the reasons I decided to flash it, instead of remaining on the factory image, was that it behaves like the factory image once it is installed. Meaning the bootloader is closed and I don’t have to ever worry about updates (manually flashing the latest firmware files or the latest gapps, etc.). It even has automatic system updates, meaning it installs system updates whenever I am not using the phone. So while I’m asleep my phone is updating itself and the next morning I start the day with the latest GrapheneOS release. Very convenient!

I still download apps primarily from the Play Store (auto updates also work for those apps!) and use F-Droid only for apps that aren’t available there (due to F-Droid signing most apps with their own key). But, since the Play Services and the Play Store run as a user app, I am at least able to take all permissions away from them, which should reduce the amount of data that can be collected by them.

There are drawbacks though, one of them is the lack of Pixel features. Those missing features include adaptive charging and sound output improvements, which results in degraded speaker quality on GrapheneOS, especially with newer Pixel phones (verified on a Pixel 7).

In the future I hope to ditch Android altogether on my main phone and switch to a Linux phone (and have a cheap Android phone, or a compatibility layer, for disrespectful companies, like banks or EV charging providers, that force me to install an Android or iOS app), but I haven’t seen the right Linux phone hardware for me yet. I plan to replace my Pixel 5 when Android 15 releases (as Android 14 is the last major update for it), so maybe I can switch to a Linux phone by then. :)

Eh, I don’t at flatpak or snap unless I have no other choice

I thought the same until I discovered that Flatpak gives me the power to restrict apps in their permissions, similar to firejail, but less cumbersome. Since then I actually prefer Flatpak over traditional packages (I even switched to Fedora Silverblue), as I have a global override that, for example, revokes permission to access the root of my home directory or to use the X11 display server.

This allows me to keep a clean home directory, as applications are prevented from writing into my home directory (configuration files then automatically get stored in the Flatpak directory ~/.var instead) or, even worse, into executable files, such as ~/.bashrc. I can also be confident that applications use Wayland, if they support it, and not a less secure display server (X11). Applications that don’t support Wayland yet can either be made to run under Wayland (Chromium / Electron) or I have to grant those applications permission to actually use an X11 server (Bottles / WINE, Steam).

On the other hand you can also opt into punching as many holes as possible into the sandbox, for example by granting applications the permission to access a local shell. That might be necessary for development tools, such as VSCodium. The thing I like about Flatpak is that it offers this kind of flexibility and you can decide on a per-application basis which system resources the application can or can not access.

Sure, the permission model isn’t perfect (e. g. D-Bus access), but for my use-case it is a huge improvement and it gives me more flexibility with selecting my distribution, as I can get the very same up-to-date applications anywhere via Flatpak.