ignoring the fact that I needed to get another usb wifi receptor because the one I had was not compatible

managed to get my printer working,

IMHO that’s one of the most important trick… namely, and sadly, don’t assume compatibility. Do 5min of Internet search to insure that the hardware you buy is actually supported, and ideally without any manual installation requiring to patch the kernel. This makes usage a lot more enjoyable, where you only focus on making your experience better.

PS: I said “sadly” because in theory, if hardware genuinely relied on standards, e.g Bluetooth, without their own extension, custom software as equivalent to drivers, hardware for PC “should” work everywhere. In practice it’s not always the case and that can be very frustrating.

I’ve been running my PeerTube instance for more than a year now so hopefully I can help :

• if you only watch, it doesn’t use your device for storage, only some of your bandwidth if P2P is enabled. If you want to host content, e.g a video of yourself explaining how to design your own smart speaker using only FOSS, then you should setup a server which will need storage for your videos.

Happy to clarify more if you need. Overall you can watch content from https://video.benetou.fr and most likely all bandwidth will come from my server. You can not upload your videos there though (unless if I accept making an account for you, which I won’t). There are other servers though, public ones, which allow registration and where you can thus upload your content too.

I should add if you want to tinker “shallowly” containers are amazing. If you need to tinker deep, using a VM proper or even another physical machine (with a KVM or another keyboard and monitor) while your main machine remains untouched, it should NOT affect your uptime.

Going to sound like a boring pleb but… if your OS takes less than 1h to install and setup (which is my experience with Debian/Ubuntu on a SSD with a fiber connection, or even on a RPi with a modern microSD on an ADSL connection over WiFi) then it doesn’t matter much what you use. You grab a mug of coffee, click here or there from time to time and if your /home partition is saved you are good to go faster than most people even respond to an email.

the legit question then is why isn’t uget relying on wget

that’s arguable, if there is a “market share” increase but users are not actually empowered nor use solutions that improve the situation for us all, e.g privacy, then what is even the point of such an increase?

I’m not saying everybody installing Linux for the first time should rely on the command line but IMHO being afraid or averse to it is not actually helpful for a deeper understanding and thus improving the situation.

IMHO it’d be worthwhile to investigate which one actually did leak it without your consent. It might be pointless for your current address but surely would be for the next one, and everybody else.

More pragmatically even though it’s wrong I’m not sure how impactful it is. Namely you can receive spam regardless of where you live. What’s worrisome is arguably when companies know more about you, e.g tastes, political leaning, sexual orientation, etc. This is a lot more than a name on an address. I believe this is harder to get, especially if you are mindful of what you share. So… is it bad? Sure, is it lost? IMHO no.

I would be surprised if consumer products came close to their b2b products

FWIW NVIDIA Q1 2023 Sankey from Motley Fool https://eu.usatoday.com/story/money/2023/05/30/nvidia-shares-stock-prices-soar/70264847007/ shows data center being 2x gaming.

In 1 word : freedom.

PS: obviously all the backup tools other recommended are still useful. I personally use rdiff-backup to save important data on my NAS with SSDs over Ethernet. Once again it’s all about speed but only after you identified what actually matters to you and it the vast majority of cases, the whole system ain’t it.

So… I’m not going to answer your question, feel free to ignore me.

It’s of course possible to do so and the most obvious way is to use dd since on Linux devices, including disks, are files. Consequently you can indeed “save” the whole system from the CLI.

That being said I would argue it’s a bit waste of time unless you have a very specific, and usually rare, use case e.g testing OSes themselves. Most likely I imagine (and again I’m not directly answering your question here so please do feel free to fix my assumptions or ignore this entirely) you “just” want to “quickly” go from a “broken” state to one where you can “work” again.

It might be because you are doing something “weird” e.g tinkering with the OS itself or lack of “trust” in your current setup.

Here my recommendation would be instead to have a “work” OS and then other partitions, or even virtual machines (not containers) dedicated to testing because it’s truly a great way to learn BUT it shouldn’t come at he risk of your data or your time.

Finally, one of the bounding resource is the speed of your disk and your time to focus. I find that installing a “fresh” OS from a modern USB stick is fast, like take 2 coffees fast. I installed Ubuntu just yesterday, twice, so rather confident about that comment.

What is indeed slow is to copy YOUR files because they are larges and numerous.

So… finally, the “trick” do NOT copy your files despite reinstalling the system! Instead, have a dedicated /home partition so that if you reinstall the OS, your files are untouched. Yes you might have to install a couple of software but if you keep track of them via e.g ~/.history (which BTW will be saved in that situation) you will be able to e.g grep apt install it and be back on track in minutes.

TL;DR: /home partition that is not deleted on OS reinstallation is often IMHO the most efficient way to go.

seamless linux ecosystem across all devices (desktop, mobile, tv, etc)

kind of what I’m trying to do with https://git.benetou.fr/utopiah/offline-octopus but IMHO there are numerous better solutions, namely well supported protocols e.g ssh, UPnP, HTTP, WebDAV, etc.

thanks for sharing a screenshot of ncdu, should help others discover it

for the visualization itself IMHO Disk Usage Analyzer gives aesthetically pleasing results, not a fan of the UX but it works well enough to identify efficiently large files or directories

Pretty sure Zigbee does support mesh, maybe not Zigbee direct though. Thanks for pointing out Whisper, can you please share a link to specs and an example of appliances? Somehow I seem to only find Ethereum related links.

You focus on performance while I focus on the ability to tinker. That’s perfectly legitimate and we don’t have to have the same needs. It though shows me that we don’t have the same understanding about the point of Pine64, especially as you mention Termux or rooting (which I’ve both used and done numerous times, sadly) as if it was equivalent to selling an actual Linux phone in the first place. I actually do NOT want Android. The point I believe is not to sell a replacement for end users today (even though, clearly, it would be nice, and I believe Purism is closer to that) as it says on the product page, but rather show that a legitimate (again, not hacks) alternative is possible but it must be built by the community. And yes, I do tell people who make criticism that it’s not enough because very often it shows what I believe is the case here, a lack of understanding of what it takes. That being said, again, I sincerely enjoy being proven wrong (means I can learn, new opportunities), hence why I’m not teasing you when I say I can put my money where my mouth is if you can do better. I believe in fact that’s what open source is all about, we’re in it together, to do better, to be better.

totally understandable which is precisely why I’m sharing, it’s sadly a surprising situation and I can’t say if it’s a trend, just sharing my personal experience.

Im not aware of that form factor with any Linux phone though. Might be better especially if sticking to terminal.

I’m not sure what your point is. I’m not arguing that you are wrong, I’m saying it’s “just” talk, meanwhile I’m ready, today, to buy better if you can provide.

WebThings (or Home Assitant) with Zigbee plugs and Zigbee (or BT or WiFi, whatever) button remote, it exists. Otherwise can use your phone to control those too.

I’ve done it few times (with Google Glass, Glass2, Vuzix Blade, Monocle) relatively easy to do but the latency IMHO is what makes it unusable.