Are you sure?

https://guix.gnu.org/manual/en/html_node/Bootloader-Configuration.html

There’s Guix sytem running on top of linux, so you don’t need to wait for hurd, :)

Guix is source base rolling release if you plan to keep it up to date weekly, so I don’t know why you feel it so distant from Gentoo. Binaries updates are still rolling released but their pace is slower.

Well, before wayland I always used fluxbox (eventually with picom compositor, which previously was compton). Then now on wayland I’m using sway with fuzzel, yambar and others.

I’ve always felt both gnome and kde, as well as most other DEs really bloated. Gnome used to be more stable on wayland, and as of Today with better support for nvidia AFAIK, but KDE is quickly catching up.

Not sure why the hate on gnome (and I guess on GTK as well). It doesn’t offer all the customization by default, but you can get it through extensions while available. But on KDE one really needs to see a pletora of dependencies each time one adds a simple module or application. Both are improving gradually to become less intense on resources being KDE more advanced on that.

But hey, both are bloated compared to non full DE compositors such as sway or labwc. BTW I use sway with tabbed mode (not actually tiling) and some tweaks, and I prefer that over stacking compositors, but if wanting one labwc is pretty cool.

On X11 there’s a huge amount of window managers plus compositors plus several other applications which altogether can give a similar sense to a DE but way less intense on resources, and for sure way less bloated. To me DEs are overrated to answer your title, but perhaps that’s just me, :)

I know most don’t care. I initially stated most people don’t agree with me. This is just my take on universal packages in general. I really like and appreciate the typical shared libraries native to most distros. It’s OK we disagree, I only hope we don’t end up with empty shells with systemd and everything else on app stores…

I installed liri-shell, and some other apps some time back, and totally disliked the experience. Too many duplicated stuff, which was totally unnecessary. While I can, I void universal packagers.

I’m not complaining about open source, I’ve been using FLOSS for so many years now. The thing with developers only supporting universal packages distributed binaries is that the build recipes might be too tight to them, or not explicitly exposing all dependencies, and several other things. I have no issues building and installing software. So that’s not it. All I said was that to me closing bugs because not using the universal package supported is sort of crazy, being open source and supposedly being able to build and distribute. I didn’t say I couldn’t support myself.

I’ve tried in the past flatpak packages, they are terrible in many senses the proponent (vast majority AFAIK) don’t say, among them:

• They create huge static binaries
• One gets many libraries embedded in the static libraries or local static libs to the package which are often repeated among many static binaries, even the same version of them. This is totally avoided when building against dynamic native libraries.
• When installing a pletora of static dependencies for a package, lets say liri, a bunch of the stuff it requires might already bi installed natively in your system, but they need the static deps locally part of the package.
• Care must be applied, there are statistics available about abuse on vulnerabilities infection on pypi, npm and so on, this no different on these packagers repos/hubs.

Good that they provide an alternative way to install packages not available in your distro repos, but for that user repositories building against native libraries are a much better option, like AUR in the case of Arch, and even their binary packages coming from other distros or from upstream might be even better than those universal static binaries providers.

There are political aspects involved in the past claim from the proponents, and it’s that in their view gnu+linux echo-system should become like the windows one, where everyone company or org (to them doesn’t matter) should be able to provide their binary packages, and then there’s no reason to think of anyone being able to build their staff.

There’s a tendency actually on providers on those hubs, to ignore problems on people who tries to build their stuff on their own, claiming they only support those universal packages. Which to me it’s dangerous, since it goes in detriment to the ability to build and distribute the software, which might not be due to licenses, but rather practical reasons. This might actually be against the licenses they use, but now a day who cares, right, it’s available on that packager repo…

Lastly one argument provided in favor of the apps coming from those universal packages is sandboxing. But there’s firejail which can be install on most gnu+linux distributions, and comes with profiles for a pletora of apps, and if sandboxing is not enough, it can easily be combined with apparmor, or if you prefer selinux might be used… No need for those universal packages to have a sandboxed experience.

One final note, so far gnu+linux has been characterized by having a diversity, which is good, that diversity offers people options to choose from, and a lot of different solutions for different purposes. Not so long ago the claim was that it was not good, that meant fragmentation, and fragmentation is bad for adoption and maintenance. I see it the other way around, this diversity allows for choosing for what aligns better with the user intends, like easy to use, or rolling release, or as vanila as possible, or as up to date as possible, or as hardened as possible, etc, etc. Systemd is another example of this universalization intended. Perhaps some distros prefer to be a shell for systemd and get packages just from universal packages, that’s bad news to me.

Of course having universal packagers present an oportunity for corps and orgs to also provide stuff on the gnu+linux platform, but in my mind the best would be for them to offer free/libre and open source software, that would build on any system and be provided by any packager that wants to offer it. Though I believe that to be too idealistic perhaps. Jeje.

Read about it some other community, perhaps the guix one, and I was keeping it to help me in the future. It relies on nonguix repo which has its own recipes, but this one is nice. I wish I wouldn’t need any binary blobs, but sadly that’s not how things work. Counting on risc-v not just getting competitive hardware, but also motivating the surrounding hardware to follow.

I’ll definitely need it in order to use relatively modern hardware.

Many thanks !

Artix (current)

• Vanilla as much as possible (same as Arch)
• Rolling release (same as Arch)
• No systemd (my personal preference)
• AUR availability (still an Arch derivative)

Guix (as soon as I have the time)

• Similar reason as for Artix
• Reproducible builds
• Guile
• Static configs

Monero?

What do you mean by unstable? I don’t get what this means. Install? Perhaps choosing a graphical install if available for your distribution of choice. I’ve heard nice things about Mint (can’t tell, I’m using Artix, and Guix is in my plans).

That said, US or EU are not that different. Actually the EU is little by little deteriorating the data privacy it used to say it protected, but moreover, even if the data is kept in EU, what does it prevent US gov or corps to get access to the data? Did people forget about the 5 eyes, the extended ones (not sure how many, there were several extensions)? Did people forget that no matter the current differences, the EU and the US are allies (not just politically) any ways?

Linux (kernel) itself has already identified itself as a US org, since it complies with the US requirements and law, to the point of banning developers from countries the US doesn’t like to be cooperating with US orgs (whether gov or not).

So, focusing on country based software developers shouldn’t be the main motivation. Looking for free/libre software if possible, so that you get some freedoms of yours sort of intended to be protected through licenses, or if not available then open source, is what we should be looking for. On top of that, communication software should be e2ee, and if possible distributed or peer to peer, or at least decentralized, and so on. Also we tend to forget that the data kept in the cloud is no longer yours anymore, no matter the cloud, neither the country, and if in need to keep personal data on some cloud we should make sure it’s encrypted, but still the data keeps being the cloud owner hands, so having personal backups is important, and clouds usually don’t advertise what metadata they leak.

Having said that Fedora sounds OK to me while Ubuntu sounds too commercial to me and actually now a days looking for users to get packages from its own “app store”. Instead of the “country of origin” for a distro, perhaps more importantly it is to see what your needs are, for example do you prefer rolling release vs. stable releases? Do you prefer vanila kind of packages (as close to upstream as possible) or your fine with the distro making changes to the upstream software as that serves better your purposes? How user friendly the distro is? Though perhaps you’re out of options if the framework laptop requires firmware or patches not found upstream, then you might better stay with the “officially supported” distros, unless what you miss by not having such firmware or patches is something you can live with, but usually x86 laptops are “easily” used with gnu+linux on top, except for some drivers not fully working with your hardware or missing firmware, but people usually still uses those laptops with gnu+linux on top. For arm laptops (I believe framework has laptos with arm CPUs, and actually is offering some initial ones with risc-v cpus) that tends to be a little more involved and I personally have no experience with that, and actually I’m waiting for a cheap enough and not so low level risc-v laptop or mini-pc to start experimenting with it (not all distributions support arm and even less risc-v).

Again, I’ve heard nice things of Mint, particularly for people new to gnu+linux, and it’s not a rolling release distribution. Though I’m one of those thinking that rolling relase distributions are easy to live with, at least not on the server spectrum (there are actually servers running on top of rolling release distributions such as Arch, but that’s not the majority of them) given they can’t afford reboots (very few updates actually require reboot on gnu+linux, linux/kernel itself being one of those which better get a reboot ASAP but not necessarily immediately) or changes requiring a service to drop even for a little while. But with rolling releases one doesn’t have to deal with big differences between distribution major versions upgrades, and the changes requiring using intervention when upgrading packages are distributed on time, so no need to focus on a lot of them at once.

Just my two cents, :)

Well, I wouldn’t like AI in any communication client of mine. Perhaps if it’s local to my box I would like that, but this solution really seems cloud based, meaning one could have an AI crawling over one’s data, to do whatever it wants with it. And local solutions usually are not as “good” as the cloud ones for whatever reason (hardware availability, data, and so on):

for users on less powerful hardware, the development team has integrated NVIDIA’s confidential computing to keep any remote processing secure. Rest assured, those who prefer to skip AI services can continue using Thunderbird without these extras.

There’s still tuta, or even /e/ (now a days murena), which still seem safer privacy wise than this new thunderbird option.

I’m really hoping for a “librewolf” kind of fork oriented to privacy, and betterbird doesn’t offer anything like that. The phoenix project has a safer user config for both firefox and thunderbird, but that doesn’t get rid of components (well perhaps it could possibly turn them off, though to make sure they better get ripped at build time).

Does any one know if this new TB service would offer caldav and carddav services as well? I didn’t see anything on stalwart advertisement.

Is there any overlap between already FLOSS applications, whether for mobile (F-Droid for example) or desktop/laptop (GNU+linux for example) and this catalog? Known to date FLOSS applications coming from everywhere, Jami sources for example comes from France and the application is peer-to-peer, XMMP standard protocol specification is governed by the IETF XMPP working group having members from different countries and servers/clients open sources from different people and servers actually all over the world or self hosted… In other words, I don’t know if having an European catalog is what really matters.

In my mind, no matter where you live, if you want your freedom[s] respected, you should prefer free/libre software, or at least open source, though in the later case it can be tweaked in ways ignored by you which might be dangerous or might not. If wanting privacy related applications, then the prior is a must but on top of that e2ee encryption is required, as minimal as possible personal information leakage, and hopefully using distributed applications mainly peer-to-peer though at least decentralized ones (hopefully self-hosting), and also security wise being externally audited if possible. I understand the EU requires the data to be stored and kept only within the EU, but that doesn’t guarantees privacy any ways, and we should learn that the best is not to trust our information to anyone, and better use peer-to-peer whenever possible or zero trust mechanisms with everything encrypted (protecting the user, not the spying mechanisms so called zero-trust, like falcon-sensor).

So I’m a bit confused by people trusting a state or supra-state backed catalogs, when FLOSS should be what conscious users should be looking for. Interoperability is what really resonates to me, but open standards (open document standard comes to mind for example) if used or for example a simple particular version of markdown (the pandoc one for example) and so on, should guarantee that…

Actually, FLOSS is more precise, given the “L” coming from “libre” in castilian (spanish now a days) referring explicitly to freedom. But it so happen open source != free/libre software, therefore open source usually disregard the philosophic aspect of freedom, which might turn against the users interest, which is what GNU guys were trying to prevent all along, because focusing in the practical aspects, without any concern on the principals behind, actually do have implications on the software itself and its usage.

Yeah, Librewolf by default doesn’t use DoT neither DoH, and so your IP is still exposed, but Librewolf had made it fairly easy to change through preferences or the librewolf overrides, whatever more convenient, as stated on its DoH enabling documentation.

+1 to rtorrent

rtorrent, you just need an ssh connection if wanting to know remotely what’s going on

FLOSS used to include the ability to build software. Perhaps that’s not important anymore but now a days some developers don’t attend problems with their build recipes because they only consider what they release through binaries, whether on flatpak or whatever other binary repository they like. At least I dislike that, it’s ok to me some or most users would prefer to grab a bloated binary rather than building anything, but that doesn’t mean forgetting about those actually wanting to build from source, or wanting to use shared libraries and software from their distros, actually that’s a requirement for free/libre software repositories. Not sure if the tendency is to move the gnu+linux users into app stores like the ones on windows, now ubuntu snaps, android play store and the like. Sure there’s more security with sandboxing, but nothing one can’t get with firejail, and if wanting MAC as well then firejail + apparmor for example.

At any rate, just my little rant. And if you’re wondering, I use AUR on Artix, and I really hope I won’t have a need for a flatpak stuff.

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Thanks !