UnfortunateShort

To correct some oversimplifications in this thread, let me just summarise some facts:

Crypto is exactly as worthless as money.

Not all crypto is bad for the climate, see for example Etherium and Solana.

Crypto has legitimate uses, especially as a replacement for traditional bank transactions, which to remind everyone, are basically made up numbers and ‘trust me bro’-s. And I will explicitly include smart contracts and NFTs here, just to annoy people who don’t get them.

Not all crypto is private. In fact, it was designed to be the opposite, hence most crypto isn’t private at all.

While not all crypto is private, even less ways to spend or exchange crypto are private. A simple and also very private thing is cash.

Aren’t they installed by default on Mint? Definitely are on some distros, I think EndeavourOS and Garuda Linux for example

“That’s neat, I wonder whether I can configure it…”

Pointieststick, Itsfoss, GamingOnLinux, KDE Blogs

Linux basically cannot damage hardware in any way that Windows couldn’t. The hardware/firmware decides what interfaces it offers and what you can configure. If any hardware puts these roadblocks only in the driver or some UI, and (for whatever reason) only the Windows version, I guess you could.

Would be a really strange thing to do tho, since most just implement a generic driver that works everywhere and then at most an interface on top of that.

Connecting to any trustworthy VPN at the very least:

1. Encrypts your connection entirely and ensures you are connected to a party you trust
2. Limits snooping in your traffic to one party you trust

Which is objectively not a scam and a desirable thing to do. Not as desirable as hosting your own VPN, but 100% better than not having one, no matter what some guy on the internet says.

I mean, why support another API if you have already implemented one, right? Pretty sure there is a Flatpak Version of Proton, wo you can somehow bundle it as well

Bruh, you need a new name. “EU OS” is both terribly bland and super hard to pronounce. I guess they got screwed by EndeavourOS and e/OS already occupying EOS already, but you can do better. Let me try:

EurOS (self-explanatory) Ios (as a play on Io, the mythological ancestor of Europa and, in my humble opinion, a brilliant mocking of iOS) BoIS (Boring Independence System… Why yes, I do like Rust and Arch, how did you know?) PlutOS (Lowest layer, ruler of the underworld, get it? Get it? Okay, it mainly sounds cool.)

Can we please just ban distro war ragebait?

It’s 2025 and I’m sick and tired of it. You can feel cool for using a specific distro for all I care, you are embarrassing yourself at worst. You are toxic for shitting on other distros or creating an adversarial narrative tho

I mean, good for him I guess? Comparing Mint to Arch is about as pointless as comparing Mint to headless Debian.

Yeah, Element is super easy to use.

You just need to chose a Matrix instance, create an account with username and password that have nothing to do with what follows, log in (not that), generate keys, ideally back up those keys (which you could ignore, but you are prompted to), then it bothers you with cross-signing (which you can also ignore, except you kinda can’t, depending on you contacts, so log in again and confirm the devices), then chose another, unrelated instance to be discoverable via mail/phone (which again is optional, except if you want to be or don’t want to explain how adding via domain + name works), than add mail or phone number and activate it and boom, you are golden. Except you are not, because if you want Element X, well, you still have no push notifications, which just require you to… Oh, create another account, neat!

Meanwhile on Signal you do what? Punch in your number, confirm, optionally set a PIN, optionally enable backups, done. Yeah, that’s not as private, and missing online massage backups, I know, but it’s also a 1-3 step setup without any alarming prompts, telling you to do non-straightforward stuff that could very well compromise your privacy. Or having to dig through options and make choices and handle keys you don’t understand.

Do you need a reminder that 123456789 is a popular password and 2FA commonly considered a nuisance? Matrix is complicated enough to confuse even (non-ITSec) IT people.

As a professional software developer, I consider Matrix/Element to be quite user-unfriendly (and anecdotally also quite buggy)

Edit: Some clarifications. Describing this easy process was kinda confusing for silly ol’ me

Does borg support rclone? Might be an interesting addition to adapt that chain for cloud storage solutions

Conversations is very simple

There are some fairly good solutions tho. Matrix is still kinda half-baked (specifically thinking about 2.0 and Element X) and Conversations has limited capabilities, but they are fairly easy to use

Edit: Although I would really wish Matrix had a ‘normie-mode’, with secure and reasonably easy to handle defaults

…Except there are three players in that game already. Go by the names of Red Hat, SUSE and Ubuntu

If you are talking about online services, Proton is a Swiss option and for what it’s worth, Bitwarden offers an EU instance. Both are freemium OSS. You could also self-host Bitwarden. If you are looking for offline options, there are plenty. KeePass2 comes to mind.

Oh, I was just mocking the claim that they can’t store 3 days worth of food.

Unless of course they are like 6 people on 60 m², in which case I want to sincerely apologise

If you cannot stote 3 days worth of food, my first investment would be a single fridge. Because it can totally hold that much.

You could also buy insanely expensive IBM enterprise hardware. I think they still do PowerPC stuff

Go to settings, search for Application Style, there, in the top right you can click Gtk Theme and select one. You can also click Get new.. and download a new one. Note that they might now show all by default.

You can find more via the website. To do so, select any, click Visit project website and search the site for more. To find them in the Get new... window, just put the name in the search bar. They are guaranteed to show then.

Edit: Any of the items I named might be slightly off. Need to get to my computer to correct that 😄