So someone recently told me I should cut back on donations to open source projects. So I broke down my spending since October 1st (with subscriptions annualized) and … I’m not spending enough. My spending on FOSS is that 1.3% slither and adding in subscription services makes it 4.1%.

I’m not in a rush to start donations, since I don’t want to add to the December-ness of FOSS donations. I just want to hear people’s thoughts.

I currently donate to:

  1. GrapheneOS
  2. KDE
  3. Mint (Update: Since drawing this graph this has been cancelled. Due to their security and the fact I don’t really use them anymore)

In terms of priorities I have the following:

  1. Contributes to the “security by default” of the Linux ecosystem.
  2. Headquartered outside of the US, or at the very least a project that’s a middle-finger to US big tech.
  3. Something I actually use would be preferable (Currently I use Kubuntu (distro-hop aggressively pending) with DesktopPal97, CachyOS, GrapheneOS, ProtonMail/Drive/Pass, LibreOffice, Steam, Threema, Anki, Lemmy, Firefox, various Accrescent Apps, and various browser extensions)

The real tough part is that I don’t want to use PayPal (Thiel/Musk), GitHub sponsors (Microsoft), or Bitcoin (I’m open to mining it in the background, but I don’t like the idea of turning real cash into fake cash).

So what do you all donate to?

  • curbstickle@anarchist.nexusEnglish
    2·
    7 hours ago

    My needs are light for its use honestly. I work from home, so on the go I mostly need something to take notes on or maybe write some code on the go, which its more than enough for. But there is all kinds of fun stuff posted up on mastodon for MNT, like egpu use, enhancements, etc.

    But one thing I’d say about the rk3588 is that the performance charts can be misleading. Single core performance, an n100 would win, but parallel processing the 3588 is a champ. It also wins on power and heat. You can run a VM, do some builds, and even light gaming on them. When I compare it to crap ive used in the past that couldn’t do half of that for twice the weight and size, it just seems like a handy workhorse to me.

    I’d also mention that the approach from MNT includes easy upgrade paths, including CPU, which they’ve done for the laptop model already.

    Couldn’t say whether it works for your needs obviously, but I’d say check against tasks rather than benchmarks.

    As far as the t480, similarly I just made sure it had enough ram. Honestly I have a few ssd’s around for various reasons so I’d just swap in whatever, again light on storage requirements when on the go. The biggest problem I have is the battery, internal is at about 50% and external about 70%, so I’ll need to replace that at some point. Still get a good 3-4 hours out of it no problem though, and a replacement for each is like $20-$40 so no big deal. I also dont mind waiting for a bit of a deal though (and really like keeping perfectly good hardware working for me), so I’m happy with it. I did put arch on there over my usual (Debian), and builds there are fairly quick if I let it use all the cores.