For me the win is being able to delete my Google speakers for voice control. Paired with Home Assistant Voice device it can pretty much replace Google. I’ll just use the Google speakers via bluetooth as music players.
UI is a bit clunky as mentioned, but I’m happy to live with that for now due to ^^^.
Alanis could write an extra line in a particular song about this.
Or she could write a new song about NIMBYism, hypocrisy etc.
It’s not FOSS though I think? Free and paid tier. Website doesn’t say much about privacy etc. I actually have Lawnchair running silently and almost configured to mirror my Nova home screen but there doesn’t seem to be folders in the app drawer which is a pain, unless I have totally missed it.
Edit: Indeed, I totally missed it, in the settings. FFS.
Excellent. Lawnchair it is then.
The Fossify suite has a messages app. Available on Fdroid. No internet access, no trackers.
It’s not as polished visually as the mainstream apps but works absolutely fine.
Thanks for your thoughts. Totally agree.
I was in the verge of installing GOS but I think there is an issue with a first responder app that we are about to get access to, throwing errors of a phone seems to be rooted or similar, so I’ll have to check that it more. If its a non issue, GOS will be in play.
Good shout on the Fossify suite. Have replaced a few G products with those.
Excellent list of FOSS stuff here which helped me a lot.
Ah OK thanks. Its not an app as such. I get you now. I was searching for an app or UI install called Photon!
Thank you!
Hi folks.
It was mainly my joy that an app’s default position is “we don’t do notifications”. I’ve never seen that before. Usually one is rushing to turn them off.
I guess its privacy on two levels; privacy from potential tracking, but also privacy from intrusion, constant attention etc.
I get that Lemmy is public and it could be irrelevant if my notifications are on or not. Its just such a refreshing position to see in an app.
Can you tell me more about that? I was able to see this thread on those links but not familiar with Photon. I searched a bit but a few different techie things came up.
You had me at “don’t even bother with most apps any more…” 😁
I can’t unsee that now. 😫
OK I have you. You dont need the internet because you have the internet in your terabyte farm. Pretty cool.
Thanks for the detailed reply.
One final question, I’m sure its dark at the bottom of the deep rabbit hole you are in, what do you do for batteries for your head torch?! 😀
I love the sound of this but can I ask, if the net goes down and you hardly notice, where do you get your ‘net’ from? Or is it that your intranet doesn’t need internet as such and everything is just local?
I might have answered my own question there but I’m interested to understand it a bit more.
Thanks!
Ireland hopes it goes well for you. 🇮🇪
As far as I know, if you have a dual boot setup, when you choose what OS to go into, it will use the 8GB available. You dont have to split it 4/4. You’re only using one OS at a time, so whichever you choose on booting up will use the 8GB you have.
Yes it is “undoable” as such. There won’t be a button to undo it just like that, but there will be plenty guides out there I’m sure.
You can usually boot from a USB stick as long a sit has enough space and you prepare it properly by writing the correct file to it.
For Mint you have to write the image file (called an ISO) to the USB, restart the machine, go into boot settinhs, choose “Boot from USB”, and then away you go.
Further deets here: https://linuxmint-installation-guide.readthedocs.io/en/latest/
It sounds like you will be buying the laptop and that it won’t have loads of college security stuff on it, which is good for what you want to do.
Depending on your needs in terms of bespoke software, Linux Mint OS might solve a lot of your issues. Piece of piss to install and way better option than Windows. As a former Windows user since W95, I moved to Linux Mint this year and I will never go back.
I had an old Windows 10 machine that was unable to run Windows 11, so I installed Mint on it and its like a new machine. The OS is quite similar to Windows in a lot of ways.
You can even try it out live from the bootable USB before you install. I tried it like that and within about 30 seconds I was hammering the install button.
Having said all this, if you are required to give the laptop to the college to install stuff on, you might be a bit limited.
Libretube, smarttube and the like. You realise the amount of bloated shit there is on YT when you use one of those. They are like a front end on the infra I suppose. Not familiar with Loops, must go digging!
Yet they still are knocking on the door of a 1tn valuation. 😖