I own several external 2.5'' HDDs on the 1 TB range where I save my data. Samsung has worked well for me, but now I need more space.

One option would be to buy an external SSD instead of HDD.

Another would be to get an external NVME, but so far I haven't found cases for them.

Nowadays we even have 1 TB flash drives, should I get one of these instead?

I could also buy 2 0.5 TB micro SD cards instead.

So many options make it difficult to decide.

What brands and technologies do you recommend?

Software is going to be debian based.

A way to long introduction

I've been toying with the idea of getting a second phone to put postmarket OS on. So out of curiosity I've been going through the available software checking if I could maybe even use such a device as a daily diver. The result: Not yet, but it is very close (purely from an app availability standpoint). Most use cases have functioning apps or apps that are actively worked on. I did however notice some gaps. Now, my programming knowledge is very small and I don't really have the time to learn and then develop/maintain the apps. At least not at the moment. I have been checking out penpot however. Penpot is a browser-based graphic design tool with a focus on UI/UX design tool, similar to figma, but open source. And there is a mostly complete asset pack for gnome/adwaita applications available. (Side note to everyone trying it out: If you are getting weird flickering then it might be a Nvidia/Wayland issue. Switching to X should resolve it)

Long story short: I have cheated some mock-ups for some apps that I am hereby sharing with the world. Some of them are a bit rough around in some places but maybe someone finds themself inspired by it. All of them are mobile first designs but since its Adwaitas design language it shouldn't be too hard to imagine how they would look on a desktop. If you decide to use one of my designs then you don't need to credit me (though it certainly would be appreciated)

I suspect that most people won't be familiar with (2/3 of) the underlying services that my ideas are build upon. Feel free to check them out; I recommend them wholeheartedly.

App 1: Cookbook

There used to be a piece of software called gnome recipes. But development on that app has since been abandoned and I think they had the wrong approach to it anyway. The old project aimed to not only supply the software but also the content, shipping a curated list of community supplied recipes. I am looking for a solution to save recipes from the numerous food blogs and recipe websites, that syncs using a (self hostable) online service. And wouldn't you know it such a service already exists in the form of "Cookbook" a nextcloud add-on. This app would simply act as an additional frontend. Import happens via a schema.org json template that a lot of websites use to store and display their content. That format does also allow to store nutritional information, meaning that nextcloud is also capable of saving that. I did not make place for that because it seemed to clutter the UI and I personally don't care too much about having that information easily accessible, especially since most sources don't include it in my experience. My mockup does include a floating button that allows to quickly jump between the ingredients and your last scroll position.

I was inspired by a Android/iOS app called [körbchen](koerbchen.app], which offers the same service but isn't open source or self hostable. An already hosted instance of nextcloud cookbook is operated for example by murena, the folks behind the /e android rom btw.

Squeeze Remote

The Lyrion Music Server (previously known as Logitech Music Server) allows you to create your own wifi enabled speaker system (for example using a raspberry pi). Accessing music from your NAS, a webradio or steaming service is possible, complete with multiroom support (allowing you to chain multiple speakers together so that they play the same thing at the same time). But to operate such a system one needs a remote. The server offers a web app but that one isn't particularly nice.

Lemmy

Last but not least of course here is my idea how a gtk client could look like. I know there are already two projects which tried to build such an app, but development seems to have stalled or been outright abandoned. I tried to build !thunder_app@lemmy.world for Linux a couple of weeks ago. That worked reasonably well, but at the end it still feels alien because at the end of the day it is an android and ios app. Using it with a mouse felt even weirder because it is not designed that way. Anyway: Maybe third time is the charm for gtk apps.

If anyone else has similar mock-ups flying around on their hard drive, feel free to post them in the comments.

currently doing a fix of the code, wait for the 0.2 release!

Thunderbird is great, but very complex and possibly insecure and not private.

Threat model is an important key word here. Imagine you would write Mails over Tor/Tails only and need a secure Mail client.

(Btw I can recommend Carburetor Flatpak for that).

Because of this, the thunderbird hardening user.js, similar to the Arkenfox project exists.

But it is a bit too strict for most threat models. Also settings might change or break, and this has no automatic updating mechanism.

(I should upstream the updater)

The user.js is also just a template, so a ton of mostly not needed configs will stay there.

This project makes the setup of the hardening user.js easy.

Once setup, the script is placed in ~/.local/bin and a user systemd service runs it every once in a while.

You can comment out lines if you want to keep certain settings.

A while ago I was looking for a list of available Flatpak repositories but didnt find one, so I made my own.

Note that most developers put everything stable onto Flathub. But there are a ton of other remotes I found, most are for development, beta and nightly things, but there is also a Firefox ESR remote and more interesting stuff to find.

I want this list to be complete so if you know any more please open a PR or Issue!

(I used this list to include a few more tutorials like Flathub subsections)

In every ubuntu derivative, if I open a terminal and type an unrecognized command I always get suggestions.

This is so far not what happens with debian 12.5. What package do I need?

And what do debian users use to find new packages from the terminal?

The fact that you get a full OS for free, customizable and no crappy forced in features that you don't want is amazing.

I can stress enough that my experience with Linux has been resoundingly positive, it's almost like that finnish bill gates guy made a golden goose of an OS.

Ever since I upgraded my WiFi to pcie and moved to Fedora, it has been nothing but smooth sailing.

• AMD GPU just works, no fussing about, get straight to fragging on Xonotic and Counter Strike

•Customize Fedora to my liking, made it more like windows with the extensions provided

• What's this? A software app store? Swell! I no longer need to download stuff off from dodgy sites or numbingly installing everything manually!

• The mascot of Linux? 10/10 and penguins are one of my 2nd favourite animals

How was your experience with this Unix-like wonder? In a home user manner and/or a business use manner?

Let me know!

I think it would be great to have a archive so that the various documentation, comments and hacks / workarounds could be searched.

The reason I ask is because they block VPN traffic, restrict some content behind a login wall and I have blacklisted them from my DNS so I plan on never returning.

But I find myself lacking odd tips from the Sway community and other communities.

I'm looking for alternatives to wii backup manager, what do you recommend?

I came from Arch to Void just today and after installing KDE and enabling dbus, I enabled SDDM, I type in my password and it says login failed, I tried lightdm, I couldn't login neither in my user account nor root, I setup plasma to run with xinit, plasma did launch successfully, but sudo NEVER worked inside plasma, it always says "password incorrect, please try again" even though I'm able to sudo inside TTYs

I tried "sudo sddm" and read the logs, it says SDDM: authentication_FAILED for user "" which is weird (it didn't print any names)

There were also some PAM logs in between, I didn't change any PAM configuration

I have elogind installed and enabled too

I've been using linux desktop for a year or so now. One noteable thing i keep seeing is that one person will say I dont like XYZ distrobution because of its base. But I am still a little unsure what is meant by it. I am assuming the main difference between each base is the choice of package management(?). But what other factors/aspects that are important for the average user to know about each 'base'? This is probably quite a broad question to a rather technical answer, but appriciate any answers, and i'll try my best to understand and read up :)

I'm considering switching to linux but I'm not a computer savvy person, so I wanted to have the option to switch back to windows if unforeseen complications (I only have 1 pc). Is it just a download on usb and install? And what ways can I get the product key or "cleaner" debloated versions.