You know the argument is facetious when Microsoft Corporation is being compared to Linux Foundation.

The whole raison d’etre of one is precisely that it can not be owned and control whereas other is trying since its inception to capture value. The organization of both being in the same country its actually irrelevant.

Edit: don’t want to invest too much time on this kind of discussion but, and I don’t think Linux == Torvalds anymore, his Wikipedia page does state that he has dual citizenship, in 2010 said “I have way too much personal pride to want to be associated with any of them [U.S. political party], quite frankly.” then in 2024 “I’m Finnish. Did you think I’d be supporting Russian aggression?” so I’m not exactly convinced he feels like a US patriot, whatever that might mean.

It is a LOT of work indeed! In fact I even commented on that hours ago in https://lemmy.ml/post/36231170/21124115

… but as you mention the alternative is ALSO a lot of work PLUS frustrations.

So between learned helplessness and tiring empowerment the choice remains obvious.

FWIW whenever it feels like it’s “too much” I reminder myself how I browse through obscure man pages decades ago… to still find them useful today! It’s crazy that so long after learning about tools like more or grep is useful on :

• a desktop
• a console (SteamDeck)
• a mobile phone (which basically didn’t exist back then)
• a VR headset (yes, via termux)
• the “cloud” (as in fine it’s just a server)

and the IT pro with 10 NAS setup are the perfect linux users.

Well I’m closer to that. I’m an “IT pro” (I pay my bills by writing software) and I did learn CS at uni… and yet it’s STILL damn hard!

I think that might be the part that “grandma” (bit sexist and ageist there but going with the example) finds it hard is a given but that professionals are struggling daily is somehow hidden away.

I can give you examples from just yesterday :

• my deGoogled Android phone rejected my SIM card yesterday “SIM 1 not allowed”
• my home IoT server stopped working

and few others smaller problems. So… I had to find ways to fix that which lead me to learn that :

• some bug into HomeAssistant (my IoT server gateway) led me to restart its container, without having to restart the device itself
• my Android ROM has a “Reset Network Settings” within the “Reset Options” menu

The irony is that some people who are not professional might even know about the later one but I didn’t. So… my whole point :

TL;DR: IT is hard for everyone because it’s complex (lots of moving parts) and always changing (“updates” are not just “better” but different) so we ALL must keep on learning.

Then it’s arguably delegating some of the cost to the final user, large streaming companies spending a bit less on IXP contracts while viewers have to have newer hardware that might need a bit more energy too to run.

Thanks for the clarification, it makes me wonder though, is it bandwidth saving at no user cost? i.e is the compression improved without requiring more compute at the end to decompress?

So… a lot more people now have :

• 4G/5G on the go and proper broadband at home and office and even in unique location (sadly via MuskSat for now…) other ways to get data
• very capable devices in mobile phones, (mostly Android) clients e.g. video projector or dongles, of course computers
• human eyes… that can’t really appreciate 4K on average

… so obviously we should NOT stop looking for more efficient ways and new usages but I’m also betting that we are basically reaching diminishing return already. I don’t think a lot of people care anymore about much high screen resolution or frequency for typical video streaming. Because that’s the most popular usage I imagine everything else, e.g XR, becomes relative to it niche and thus has a hard time benefiting as much from the growth in performances we had until now.

TL;DR: OK cool but aren’t we already flattening the curve on the most popular need anyway?

Use ffmpeg to record audio from your desktop (which will include the meeting) then pass it to whisper.cpp or other text-to-speech FLOSS solutions. No need for “AI” or Windows software for that kind of tasks.

You might want to check sshfs but overall yes rsync works well. I just uploaded 200Go yesterday, no failure.

On my LAN if I want to share without downloading them then I rely on MiniDLNA/ReadyMedia for DLNA/UPnP meaning it works with VLC on desktop, obviously, Android video projectors, mobiles, etc.

Guess it depends on your usage but I stopped using Samba when I didn’t have Windows machines on my network. Never looked back.

Others have said it before but basically : what is YOUR (not me, not your best friend, nor your colleague, etc) threat model?

To clarify that means WHO is actually trying to threaten your security?

Typical for most people it would be :

• scammers trying to get pieces of your identity or your local cryptocurrency wallet or resources they can use to repeat that on to others.

For some people, like activists or political journalists it would be :

• national actors, e.g. governments, with their surveillance apparatus, who might end up on a list with a set of conditions that would trigger some automated scan to get e.g. Signal logs

For very very few people, say Edward Snowden, who within the previous group actually did trigger some action :

• actual team of hackers trying to hack into their devices

So as you can imagine if you are part of group 1, 2 or 3 then way you will protect yourself is totally different. What you will also have to protect is also different, e.g. if you have no cryptowallet but are traveling you might have to protect your phone physical phone and its data.

So… if you are serious about this, take a cybersecurity class. There are plenty available but how a computer works, software and hardware alike, is precisely what makes them simultaneously powerful and also dangerous. There are plenty of ways to break security (e.g. return oriented programing), plenty of ways that practically impossible (e.g. encryption) due to the very nature of computers (i.e. computational complexity) which IMHO makes this one of the most fascinating topic. Ask yourself come the credit card in your pocket (costing few bucks to make) can’t be cracked by the largest super computers (costing billions) on Earth?

TL;DR: no offense but you don’t seem to be ready for the answer without getting the basics first.

If your computer boots when plugged in (not only by pushing the power button) it would be feasible via a connected plug, but you’d still need a small computer, e.g HomeAssistant on a RaspberryPi, to convert the HTTP request to ZigBee, or a WiFi plug but I’m not sure which one would handle an HTTP request, if any.

Fair enough, didn’t read the community rules, left. Easier.

“RT, formerly Russia Today, is a Russian state-controlled international news television network funded by the Russian government.”

Should one really rely on state propaganda (Russia) to forge an opinion related to the geopolitical situation of the state (Ukraine) it is in war against? Let’s just ban rt.com posts from this community.

The discussions here are quite passionate so a bit of a reality check :

“PineStore has also discontinued the PinePhone Pro which was talked about in the last recent blog post. TLDR, sales were low”. https://pine64.org/2025/08/16/august_2025/#pinephone-pro-discontinuation

So… people here say they do want one, but clearly not like that one.

Also recently the crowd funding of https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/liberux-nexx--3 barely reached 10% of €1,434,375 Fixed Goal with just 135 backers.

So… also clearly not that one either.

So what accelerated development do people not just want to claim they do want, but actually pay for?

Baking apps: pin the websites

Typically if you want to check your account status sure, that work. Maybe do an IBAN transfer, if somehow 2nd step auth via their app isn’t required, but typically mobile payment, even if it’s not really mobile (e.g. scanning a QRcode on a desktop) requires their app. So in theory yes, in practice for most of the things people use banking daily it’s closer to mobile payment IMHO, which is basically owned by iOS/Android AFAICT.

I fallback to a deGoogled phone precisely because Linux phone isn’t up to my expectation in terms of convenience for now.

You can check my post history but just during the last few days :

• replied to “Why did PinePhone fail” as I have 2 of these https://lemmy.ml/post/35398519/20774482
• discussed on banking apps, authentication bottlenecks on iOS/Android https://lemmy.ml/post/35398519/20854067

… so yes, not there yet

PS: on “assistant” (I really think the naming is over-blowing capabilities) I have been using HomeAssistant daily for years now. I have a Nabu Casu on my shelf… and didn’t even set it up because it was either 3rd party service dependencies (not why I rely on HA) or a very complex setup. So… I would recommend not looking there, at least few months ago when I received mine, sadly.

100% get your point and indeed agree. I think verification overall is pretty much tied to iOS/(Googled)Android so my (probably naive) hope is that physical token or passkeys that are NOT platform or service dependent gain traction. That’s why I got excited when https://github.com/keycloak/keycloak/issues/23656 was recently merged. I still have to test it but anyway more and more of the services I use online (self-hosted or not) are now behind “Log in with a device” and/or WebAuthN where I feel I can properly login, using e.g. YubiKey Bio or NitroKey, without anybody in the middle “owning” my identity or at least the verification step. I believe this is pretty much the “last battle” to have secure interactions without a central (commercial or not) actor in the middle that can use this to reshape our behaviors and interactions.

It’s not rude but it’s incorrect. I have a deGoogled phone and do mobile banking with it. I don’t know for how long though but just to say it’s possible today.

Yes though I do recommend relying on a bank that does not force its customers to use Apple or Google only. I hope they’d be a way to disclose that beside just name & shame.

Right or https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2024/09/valve-appear-to-be-testing-arm64-and-android-support-for-steam-on-linux/ is also pretty positive but until it’s actually done and does support banking apps (which might not be possible due to a lot of restrictions, e.g Google services, signed ROM only, etc) then everybody will remain on the fence.

Good to know for the PPPro. PmOS indicates the support as partial https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/PINE64_PinePhone_Pro_(pine64-pinephonepro) I should try again at some point.

Been using the PineTab 2 by Pine64 regularly since it’'s out, even bringing it on holiday, and it’s been good. Some minor problems (e.g. no WiFi initially but now working, still no integrated BT for now but dongles working, etc) but honestly for that price ~$200 from Hong-Kong or ~400EUR from EU store with warranty) I think it’s excellent value for money for a tinkerer.

So… you receive plenty of great technical advice, I won’t go there.

I’m sure your title is wrong. I know for a fact that there is plenty of things you did with Linux that looked until then impossible. They do look impossible to most people today. So… yes there are plenty of things you don’t know how to reliably do but you eventually will manage!

I did read a bit from the Greater Good Science Center in Berkeley https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/ and there was a piece specifically on “everytime” or “always” as basically shortcuts during arguments that reframe the situation incorrectly. You surely meant to say “I often get frustrated trying new things on Linux” instead. It sounds like I’m nitpicking, yet simply rephrasing gives a totally new outlook to the situation. We all, literally ALL of us, do struggle when we try something new. We often fail but if we keep on trying, get methodical about it (what was the error message? did I try something similar before? how does it actually work? who could help me? etc) then you are bound to succeed.

So no, you are not the problem. No, you are not an imbecile. No, you do not always fail!