A tiny mouse, a hacker.

See here for an introduction, and my link tree for socials.

  • 0 Posts
  • 25 Comments
Joined 2 years ago
Cake day: December 24th, 2023
  • algernon@lemmy.mltoDeGoogle Yourself@lemmy.ml•What apps do you use now that you're degoogled?
    10·
    1 month ago
    1. Email

    I self-host my email using postfix, dovecot, rspamd and others. The only tradeoff I had to make here is that some of the entities I have to communicate with via email use an allow-list, so some of my outgoing mail is sent through a relay (SMTP2Go).

    1. Cloud storage / file sync

    I self-host a minio for cloud storage. I don’t need file sync, so nothing there. If I would, I would likely use syncthing.

    1. Maps & navigation

    OpenStreetMaps & CoMaps. Works much better than Google Maps did.

    1. Search engine

    Currently a self-hosted YaCy. I have my own index. Not entirely happy with this setup, will switch to something else (still self-hosted, I have no need for a general purpose search engine that indexes the entire internet of slop).

    1. Web browser

    LibreWolf

    1. Calendar

    I’m using Emacs & Org for most calendaring. Wife’s using GNOME Calendar & a Calendar app I found for her on f-droid (unsure which one).

    1. Contacts management

    Nothing on desktop, some random contacts app from f-droid on the phone. I do use EteSync to keep a backup, and potentially sync later. (EteSync syncs her calendar too)

    1. Notes / to-do lists

    Emacs & Org.

    1. Office suite (docs, spreadsheets, etc.)

    Most of my “office” needs are covered by a combination of Emacs, Typst and Zola one way or another. For the rare case where I need Office compatiblity: LibreOffice.

    1. Messaging / chat

    XMPP. Dino on Linux, Conversations on Android. I use Matrix too, from time to time (Element), and have Signal too. Not a big fan of the latter two, because it isn’t practical to self-host those.

    1. Video calling

    XMPP. Dino & Conversations. If I need to video call with someone else, I’ll use whatever they use, usually.

    1. Social media / microblogging RSS reader / news

    For social media, the Fediverse is my only social media. I’m using Tuba on desktop, Tusky on the phone for it. For RSS, self-hosted Miniflux. For Lemmy, the web ui on desktop, Voyager on phone.

    1. Music streaming / podcast app

    Lollypop & Shortwave.

    1. Video streaming / YouTube alternative

    FreeTube or yt-dlp if I need to watch youtube, PeerTube otherwise.

    1. Password manager

    Bitwarden (via a self-hosted Vaultwarden on the server side).

    1. VPN / DNS / Firewall

    The only VPN I use is WireGuard between my systems, but I don’t tunnel everything through it. For DNS, I’m using unbound on my VPS, which in turn dispatches to Quad9. Firewall? nftables.

    1. Launcher / Android OS (if you use custom ROMs)

    I haven’t de-googled my phone, because my bank app refuses to work on rooted phones, and I unfortunately need that for the bank’s 2FA. No, I am not changing banks. I do use a custom launcher (Nova), though.

    1. App store / APKs

    F-droid.

    1. Photo backup / gallery

    I manually copy photos from the phone to my PC, and it gets backed up with the rest of the stuff. I do my backups with restic, and save a copy on my own server, and another at BorgBase. I’ll have a third copy at a third place later.

    1. Weather

    wttr.in, mostly.

    1. Smart assistant (if any)

    My wife. <3

    1. Anything else you’ve replaced?

    Not strictly de-googling, but I’m using Codeberg & my own self-hosted Forgejo instead of GitHub. I replaced LibreWolf’s bookmark manager with Readeck. For push notifications on Android, I’m using a self-hosted nfty.sh.

    Would love to hear about your setup — both what works well and any trade-offs you’ve had to make. Always looking for better FOSS or privacy-friendly alternatives

    Oh dear. Strap in, for you’re in for a Journey! The entire configuration of both my desktop and the rest of my fleet (my VPS, my homelab server, and my Mom’s miniPC at the moment) are all free software. Based on NixOS, declarative configuration written in a literate programming manner using Org mode. There is a lot of documentation.

  • algernon@lemmy.mltoLinux@lemmy.ml•What was your first Linux distribution?
    4·
    2 months ago

    I switched to NixOS because I wanted a declarative system that isnt’t yaml soup bolted onto a genetic distro.

    By 2022, my desktop system was an unmanagable mess. It was a direct descendant of the Debian I installed in 1997. Migrated piece by piece, even switched architectures (multiple times! I386->ppc-i386->amd64), but its roots remained firmly in 1997. It was an unsalvagable mess.

    My server, although much younger, also showed signs of accumulating junk, even though it was ansible-managed.

    I tried documenting my systems, but it was a pain to maintain. With NixOS, due to it being declarative, I was able to write my configuration in a literate programming style. That helps immensely in keeping my system sane. It also makes debugging easy.

    On top of that, with stuff like Impermanence, my backups are super simple: btrfs snapshot of /persist, exclude a few things, ship it to backup. Done. And my systems always have a freshly installed feel! Because they are! Every boot, they’re pretty much rebuilt from the booted config + persisted data.

    In short, declarative NixOS + literate style config gave me superpowers.

    Oh, and nixos’s packaging story is much more convenient than Debian’s (and I say that as an ex-DD, who used to be intimately familiar with debian packaging).

  • algernon@lemmy.mltohomelab@lemmy.ml•What OS are you using and why?
    4·
    2 months ago

    NixOS, because:

    • I can have my entire system be declaratively configured, and not as a yaml soup bolted onto a random distro.
    • I can trivially separate the OS, and the data (thanks, impermanence)
    • it has a buttload of packages and integration modules
    • it is mostly reproducible

    All of these combined means my backups are simple (just snapshot /persist, with a few dirs excluded, and restic them to N places) and reliable. The systems all have that newly installed feel, because there is zero cruft accumulating.

    And with the declarative config being tangled out from a literate Org Roam garden, I have tremendous, and up to date documentation too. Declarative config + literate programming work really well together, and give me immense power.

    I use it on my desktop, in my homelab, and built and maintain a NixOS desktop for my wife and my mom, too.

  • algernon@lemmy.mltoLinux@lemmy.ml•Why do you use the distro you use?
    61·
    2 months ago

    I do, yes. I’d love to use it, because I like Scheme a whole lot more than Nix (I hate Nix, the language), but Guix suffers from a few shortcomings that make it unsuitable for my needs:

    • There’s no systemd. This is a deal breaker, because I built plenty of stuff on top of systemd, and have no desire to switch to anything else, unless it supports all the things I use systemd for (Shepherd does not).
    • There’s a lot less packages, and what they have, are usually more out of date than on nixpkgs.
    • Being a GNU project, using non-free software is a tad awkward (I can live with this, there isn’t much non-free software I use, and the few I do, I can take care of myself).
    • Last time I checked, they used an e-mail based patch workflow, and that’s not something I’m willing to deal with. Not a big deal, because I don’t need to be able to contribute - but it would be nice if I could, if I wanted to. (I don’t contribute to nixpkgs either, but due to political reasons, not technical ones - Guix would be the opposite). If they move to Codeberg, or their own forge, this will be a solved issue, though.

    Before I switched from Debian to NixOS, I experimented with Guix for a good few months, and ultimately decided to go with NixOS instead, despite not liking Nix. Guix’s shortcomings were just too severe for my use cases.

  • algernon@lemmy.mltoLinux@lemmy.ml•Why do you use the distro you use?
    112·
    2 months ago

    NixOS, because:

    • I can have my entire system be declaratively configured, and not as a yaml soup bolted onto a random distro.
    • I can trivially separate the OS, and the data (thanks, impermanence)
    • it has a buttload of packages and integration modules
    • it is mostly reproducible

    All of these combined means my backups are simple (just snapshot /persist, with a few dirs excluded, and restic them to N places) and reliable. The systems all have that newly installed feel, because there is zero cruft accumulating.

    And with the declarative config being tangled out from a literate Org Roam garden, I have tremendous, and up to date documentation too. Declarative config + literate programmung work really well together, amg give me immense power.

  • algernon@lemmy.mltoAsklemmy@lemmy.ml•Is there any counter AI bots in the fediverse
    4·
    4 months ago

    If any of those end up interacting with me, or I otherwise see them on my timeline, they’ll get treated appropriately: reported, blocked, or in extreme cases, served garbage interactions to. Serving garbage to 500+ bots is laughably easy. Every day I have over 5 million requests from various AI scrapers, from thousands of unique IP addresses, and I serve them garbage. It doesn’t make a blip on my tiny VPS: in just the past 24 hours, I served 5.2M requests from AI scrapers, from ~2100 unique IP addresses, using 60Mb memory and a mere 2.5 hours of CPU time. I can do that on a potato.

    But first: they have to interact with me. As I am on a single-user instance, chances are, by the time any bot would get to try and spam me, a bigger server already had them reported and blocked (and I periodically review blocks from larger instances I trust, so there’s a good chance I’d block most bots before they have a chance of interacting with me).

    This is not a fight bots can win.

  • algernon@lemmy.mltoAsklemmy@lemmy.ml•Is there any counter AI bots in the fediverse
    4·
    4 months ago

    Personally, I do not have any automatism to detect LLMs larping as people. But I do review accounts that follow or interact with mine, and if I find any that are bots, I’ll enact counter measures. That may involve reporting them to their server admin (most instances don’t take kindly to such bots), blocking their entire instance, or in extreme cases, start serving them garbage interactions.

  • algernon@lemmy.mltohomelab@lemmy.ml•Which antivirus do you use in your homelab?
    24·
    4 months ago

    None, because they typicially open up a larger attack surface than the system would have without them. It’s been like that for a while now. For references, I’d recommend this article from Ars Technica, who reference some very knowledgeable people (including Chrome’s Security Chief at the time).

    There was a time when AV software was useful. We’re a decade past that, the world has changed, software has changed, defenses have changed, and AV software did not keep up.