I think Debian offers a very good compromise. The primary repos follow the Debian Free Software Guidelines (DFSG).

Then they have a separate “non-free” repos for “non-DFSG-compliant packages that are considered important enough to make available anyway”. If you want to be a hardline free software stalwart, you can do that, and Debian supports you. If you are comfortable making a few compromises for the sake of usability, like fonts and device drivers, Debian supports you on that as well.

To this I’d add that it is very common, and very easy, to install either MicroG or the real Gapps (Google Play Services, Play Store, etc) on LineageOS.

GrapheneOS has another added bonus of allowing you to install Google Play Services only in the “work” profile, leaving your main profile Google-free.

Personally, I think everyone should be at least a little worried about their phone potentially being seized by malicious state-sponsored actors. Whether it’s a power-tripping cop, airport security, or the New American Gestapo, this kind of thing is only becoming more common as time goes on. GrapheneOS has repeatedly been shown to be resistant to attacks that stock ROMs are vulnerable to, sometimes for months or years after Graphene patched the holes. LineageOS with an unlocked bootloader is likely to be less secure against any USB attack than stock.

Just my two cents. I love LineageOS but I would never feel comfortable traveling with an unlocked bootloader. Then again, it might be better to take a burner phone when traveling anyway.

Hmm, maybe I’m thinking more iPhone 3G era than original iPhone era? I recall a time when there weren’t many apps yet and you could put out anything marginally-functional for 99¢ on the app store and get some quick cash from it. I don’t remember $10-20 being the norm but maybe that was before I was onboard.

I’ve certainly been burned by apps either breaking with iOS updates or no longer being available to download on the App Store (so you could keep using them, but only on existing devices that already had them installed).

I blame Apple for setting the standard of $1-$3 for an app with lifetime updates. And also for making it so old apps stop working on newer OSes after just a few years. The business model was broken from the start. It was great at first but the bubble burst in record time.

That was nearly unheard of just 20 years ago.

The problem here is education.

And I’m not just talking about “average joes” who don’t know the first thing about statistics. It is mind-boggling how many people with advanced degrees do not understand the difference between correlation and causation, and will argue until they’re blue in the face that it doesn’t affect results.

AI is not helping. Modern machine learning is basically a correlation engine with no concept of causation. The idea of using it to predict the future is dead on arrival. The idea of using it in any prescriptive role in social sciences is grotesque; it will never be more than a violation of human dignity.

Billions upon billions of dollars are being invested in putting lipstick on that pig. At this point it is more lipstick than pig.

I think it’s just that Mastodon posts in Lemmy are weird.

Toots don’t have titles so it just duplicates the content, and then you have a mess of @ and # tags that don’t make sense in Lemmy.

Cross-ecosystem federation is cool but also leaves a lot to be desired.

Debian Stable staying true to form!

Thanks for the writeup. Good stuff.

I’m a software developer first and a gamer second. Being a “gaming” distro does not detract from anything else, really. It just means that getting proper GPU acceleration is easy, and you’re likely to want that for development too. That was actually why I chose Bazzite. I was tired of wrestling with CUDA and ROCm.

It’s not “gaming” vs “developing”. That’s a false dichotomy.

The real choice is immutable vs traditional. And I’ll admit, immutable distros have a big learning curve. But it forces you to learn techniques that will make your life easier no matter where you go. The time I spent wrestling with dependencies on Debian or Ubuntu or OpenSuse just because I didn’t know about Distrobox…

Unless your needs are very narrow and unchanging, you’re likely to run into something that’s a giant pain in the ass no matter which distro you choose. I used to use Ubuntu LTSR so I could install a few big things in easy mode, but it made everything else harder because it was so outdated. Switched to OpenSuse Tumbleweed and everything was modern but those few vendors don’t support it so I had to wrestle with dependencies.

The answer to this problem is Distrobox. It’s the answer on Ubuntu, it’s the answer on OpenSuse, and it’s the answer on Bazzite. I’m never going back to dependency hell because I can just run everything the environment it is specifically designed for.

If you’re wondering “should I use distro X, Y, or Z”, the answer is simply “yes”. :D

On bazzite, your search order for apps/packages should be something like:

1. Flathub
2. ujust. This is more for general configs than specific apps, but take a look at what it offers.
3. Homebrew
4. Distrobox
5. Podman/Docker images
6. rpm-ostree

rpm-ostree is a last resort because it compromises the “atomic” principle of the system, but in a pinch it will give you access to anything you could get with dnf on a regular Fedora install.

Don’t sleep on Distrobox. I have a Debian box so I can run Signal from its official repo and install Geany with both GUI and CLI support. Once you export applications from distrobox they behave like first-class citizens within your desktop.

I strongly recommend trying Distrobox. If you instead hop distros, you’re going to find yourself in a similar situation eventually, where something is unreasonably difficult. That’s why Distrobox exists; so you can get the best of all worlds.

It makes sense to me IF it actually works.

Having extra capacity when a device is brand-new isn’t a huge boon, but having stable capacity over the long term would be. At least for me.

Of course this will depend on your habits. If you replace your phone every year, then it doesn’t matter. If you’re a light user and only go through a couple charge cycles per week, it’ll matter less than if you go through 1-2 cycles per day.

Personally I’m at around 1 cycle per day on my current phone, and after nearly 3 years (over 1000 charge cycles now) the battery life is shit — much worse than just 80% of its original battery life. Performance also suffers. With my last phone, I replaced the battery after 3 years and I was amazed at how much faster it was. I didn’t realize throttling was such a big problem.

I might replace my current battery, but it’s such a pain, and it costs more than my phone is realistically worth.

WTF is up with that title. Jesus.

I use Wayland now but there are still apps I run in X mode. Notably mpv and Firefox, because I cannot for the life of me configure them sensibly in Wayland, and I don’t want to write arcane KWin scripts just to get widow sizing/positioning to stay the way I want them on launch. I tried; it was extremely frustrating and still not quite functional.

Perhaps there are other window managers that would make my life easier. I haven’t tried many, but in principle, there is no way for the widow manager to know the correct size and location of new windows for arbitrary applications, so I doubt it. I consider this a user-hostile design choice in Wayland and I pray it will change in the future.

The majority of people will trail behind by 5-10 years, same as always. As long as a small minority at the cutting edge continue to use and develop better things, everyone will have access to them eventually.

They announced that they’re working with an OEM to support new non-pixel phones (perhaps even shipped with GOS).

The Pixel 9 series will be supported for another 6 years, and GOS support for the Pixel 10 is probably coming after Google releases QPR1 source. Hopefully there will be viable replacements by then.

Google is obviously going to keep making this more difficult but the rest of the world isn’t going to just sit still.

Does it do that even if you set it to “use device MAC” for the wi-fi network you’re on?

The exact location might depend on brand/OS, but in stock Android it’s in Settings > Network & Internet > Internet > gear icon next to active wi-fi network > Privacy.

It’s been a while since I ran a full-fat VM. What’s the go-to these days?

I’ll speculate.

My money’s on Asus. Asus is a bit more mainstream than Nothing but still enough of an underdog that I think they should see the value in a partnership. They already target an enthusiast niche with the ROG line.

The Nothing Phone 3 uses an SD 8s Gen 4, which is not Qualcomm’s “flagship” SOC, and it would be stretching the definition of “major” OEM, but who knows? This seems the most likely after Asus.

Moto’s only flagship Snapdragon phone is the Razr Ultra, which I guess is possible. It’d be weird, but hey, I’d buy one.

OnePlus has been moving in the opposite direction for years now, locking things down more and more. I think they’re too big for their britches at this point.

Sony’s flagships are crazy expensive, well beyond the price of Pixels. They also don’t cover the US market, though I’m not sure how important that is to the Graphene devs.

HMD doesn’t make any phones with flagship SOCs. I think their best is the Skyline, with a 7s gen 2, Qualcomm’s fourth-tier SOC line (the “s” stands for shitty).

Fairphone doesn’t use flagship Snapdragons and GOS has had some pretty nasty things to say about them in the past.

Samsung is a pipe dream. They’d have no motivation. The entire GOS user base would be a rounding error to them.

On a global scale, Xiaomi would be a huge get. Not sure I see any of the Chinese OEMs focusing on this though.

Lenovo and Blackberry…might still exist? I think?

🫡

It’s a very dumb way to say that population decline is predicted.

The birth rate really has dropped below replacement levels in the US. Immigration might not fill that gap. With how actively hostile the current administration is to immigrants, that seems likely.

I can believe this.

Every time I need to use a system with no protection, I am shocked by how many ads are fucking everywhere.

6 seconds is more time that it takes to go through a Google search, or to scroll through a screenful or two of social media. You can see a dozen ads in 6 seconds if you’re not using any kind of ad blockers.