Libb

I encourage anyone with a brain to try for themselves instead of letting others make decisions for them.

May I ask how do one try the trustworthiness of a VPN?

I mean, if the question is to decide if it works or not, well, chances are it does work but that’s not saying much. As much as I appreciate your suggestion to make up our own mind, well, in such a situation we can hardly decide by ourselves and we need independent audits. So, my question would be: are there any for that VPN you mentioned (I don’t know anything about it myself, never heard about it, never used it, which means I have nothing against or for it).

I’ve been using it for more than a year and it’s worth every cent. It’s not perfect, obviously, but it’s already so good. Useful results (no SEO crap) no ads, no tracking, great filtering tools (those alone, to me at least, are already worth paying for) and real cool features. If you have not done so already, get their 100 search trial account and you will see how you like it. I did that and I switched to a paid sub less than 3 days later.

When my first year ended I thought to myself, well, I could try to save me some money here and did not renew kinda yeah, Kagi’s cool and all but why pay when there are free options? I ran back to Kagi in the same month I decided to not renew ;)

I if I had to use a free search, it probably would be Brave Search, FYI

We have not owned a TV since the 00s and have no intention of buying one any time soon, but I had a look at the FUTO website you linked and it’s interesting read (even for the non-expert I’m).

Thx for sharing :)

Hi & welcome from a fellow Mint user.
It’s a stable distribution that comes with a lot of things preinstalled (so less extra stuff to install, but also a lot of stuff you might not need)

• +1 for Encryption, both Luks for the system disk and whatever other internal drive and for USB stick or external storage. If someone was to steal my computer I would pissed off but OK, I can deal with it knowing they can’t access my files. Use a good password (mine is 20-ish characters long all random and, yeah, I’ve memorized them but I have a decent working memory ;)
• • for (automated) backups.
• +1 for automated updates
• +1 for not installing from any source. It’s tempting but it should be the exception (for me, it means yt-dlp and Mullvad for the most, of there is also my RSS app of choice newsboat since it’s not officially available anymore :/)
• I don’t use antivirus on Linux (nor on my Mac). But I seldom download anything and don’t open attachments I’m not expecting to receive ;)
• I would not play with services as a beginner as you risk deactivating something you need.
• The firewall as gui that’s installed by default (on my Mint, at least ;): its Gufw on the command line and it’s called Firewall Configuration in the main Mint menu. Open it, type your password, activate the ‘Status’ toggle. Done. Then you can start adding rules as you need them.

I would add to that:

• Don’t rush to tweak everything at the same time. Try one at a time, it’s easier to revert back.
• Backup your home folder regularly. Not only does it contain all your precious files but it also contains most of your settings and tweaks. So, if you ever need to reinstall you will get back all those settings/tweaks when copying back your home to the fresh install.

On that topic,I’m not much of a geek (a 50-something dude and a 35+ years Apple customer) but I did learn to use git to keep a backup of my config folder. So, when I screw up something (so far, Mint has not once screwed up anything by itself, the few issues I had to deal with were all me-related) , I know I can revert back to the previous version of whatever settings I’ve just damaged without difficulty. Learning the basic of Git is not hard, it’s just…odd, and it works great. If it was compatible with LibreOffice files I would love to use if for that too…

/Not_a_Rant

Are you sure about that?

I don’t mind people sharing their feelings about their switch, joy as well as frustration. And if I did, I would not read them… exactly like I don’t read political topics ;)

It can vary a lot depending the publisher, and some will not care at all while others will use, say, tracking features or work collaboratively (they can even be using OneDrive for that, which includes MS Office in its price), or they will require the author to use a specific Word template that they have devised for Word (with the person in charge of the final layout in whatever layout application, in order to streamline or the process and save time on that part of the job), when they aren’t that kind of publishers that simply do the final layout directly in Word before sending the final PDF to the printer. Also, as an author, if a publisher has asked you to use MS Word and some specific stylesheet and realize they tried to to be smarter than them… good luck with that, unless they’re already one of their best-selling author.

And that’s just what comes to my mind and that I have been witnessing first hand ;)

So I’m wondering if an upgrade is safe because

Imho that’s the wrong question. Without backup nothing is safe whether you pate the OS or not. Anything can happen (the disk can die, the computer can be stolen,…) and, yes, most upgrades should go without any issue but then one won’t go well and then what? You need to do backups, we should all ;)

I’m currently using Proton and still have to move to another service

I’ve moved to Filen (German end-to-end encrypted cloud you can rent (or buy) for a year or… a month (maybe worth the cost at least for a month when you will upgrade) and it works real nice for me on Mint 22.1

Depending the storage you need, you can get from 10 to 50Go for free: 10 base *+10 if you use crate your account using this affiliate link (no string attached, it’s real free storage) and up to 30Go more if you also share your own affiliate link. If you’re wondering, I use their 2To lifetime plan.

2/ Related to the first question: I’m using a old laptop (asus zenbook from 2015 or 2016, can’t remember), so would I be find with an old hardware such as mine?

It’s not that old, you should not worry much ;)

Depends what you need. Many publishers require certain features from MS Word that are not available or are not as ‘compatible’ in LO Writer (not that its LO’s fault ;), but for most use case I would agree. Things are a bit more complicated in the case of Excel as far as I can understand what I read (edit: I don’t use much spreadsheets myself).

I’ve quit using MS Word a few years ago, fully switching to LO Writer. There are a few issues here and there but nothing that’s a deal breaker (and Word had its own issues too), and I must quite like many things in Writer—beside the app not spying on me, I mean ;)

I’ll avoid it as one of the manifestos mentions that we should be being kinder and look out for each other.

I won’t blame you for that, quite the contrary :)

But since it’s obviously one way to look at it, I thought I should mention it.

I’ve added your community to the sidebar. If you know of others that might fit, let me know.

Thx for the link.

Beside the ones I listed in the sidebar already? I follow a few that are related to old tech, others that are more into ‘simple’ and peaceful content. Alas, like often here on Lemmy, quite a few of them see little to no activities. Next to the journaling community I’ve decided to focus on the other community I would love to see grow and be active is the Simple Living one. It was one of the communities I appreciated the most back on Reddit (with great mods and great overall participants, useful content with little negativity/hatred or even drama) !simpleliving@lemm.ee

I also consider the Calvin & Hobbes community a great complement to any timeline. The humanism and the kindness that come out of every single strip of that wonderful comic is more precious than ever !calvinandhobbes@lemmy.world (I happily look at the new strip posted each day, even though I own all the comics)

And then there are the others communities. Things like !vintageads@sh.itjust.works or I don’t know !sewingrepairing@sh.itjust.works, and quite a few more.

I don’t know if the full list of my subscriptions is visible when looking at my profile, here on Lemmy? Let me know if it isn’t and I will send you a copy of them so you can see by yourself. Many of those communities can share content related to getting back control (on our lives/activities/the things we do and the things we use, the world we (want to) live in), and most will do it in a non-hostile way, but that is also not their main topic so I’m not sure you may want to include that many ;)

Any ideas for an icon and banner gracefully received.

• Something related to land/landscape and growing culture or stuff? Something peaceful at humane scale.
• Something related to simple/basic HTML and CSS code, like they used to be back then?
• A journal/diary page maybe? But some may suggest I’m not that objective here :p
• I try to avoid vindictive content myself but you may also consider showing the demise of that shi… corporate Web, say in the guise of some ruined ugly building/factory, and the grow of a more organic and once again fully personal Web (a tree or whatever)?

I’m no graphic designer but I made the banner/icon for our small journaling community (!journaling@sh.itjust.works). If you like it and if you think I can help you in any way contact me I would be happy to help. BTW, I also promoted your new community to our members as I think they might really be interested in what you want to do ;)

Nice! Happily joined ;)

Sorry I didn’t used PKMS as keyword :/

Don’t be, it’s not that obvious.

To answer your question… Yeah I suppose analog note-taking is probably the best, You can write without any limitation in every direction !

Will see how the conversation goes in the pkms group, but that’s the road I went and I have zero (like in not a single one) regrets.

Yep, you’re right. I tend to forget that… way too often. [Sad face]

Oh, thx for the clarification. That certainly would not help.

It looks to me like Google has that idea they own their viewership and can treat them like trash if they fancy doing so. The not too distant future will tell us if they were right or not.

What I can say is that they don’t own me. I was a Premium subscriber fir years (I can afford it and I want to support creators) but I cancelled the day they became serious against ad-blockers. For me, it was not about them forcing people to pay a sub. It never was. It was about destroying the free Web and making it a privately-owned something a few corporations would then be able to do what the fuck they wanted with. I certainly did not want to give them a cent more of my money to achieve that.

There isn’t any community about note taking where I could post my question and no this is not a “What’s the best note taking app” question…

Here, maybe? !pkms@lemmy.blahaj.zone

A community dedicated to personal knowledge management systems.

Does anyone here has some experience and is taking notes that way? I’m really curious on your experience and maybe your thoughts if it’s feasible ? Practical ?

If you ever decide to post over there, in order to no pollute this Linux community I would happily share my own choices but they may not be the most digital solution, as I fully switched back to analog note-taking, using a Zettelkasten system (a fancy name for index cards stored in shoe boxes).

Shouldn’t you be able to access YT without a Google account? So uBO correctly configured (at least on Firefox) should do a lot already. Maybe sharing with us what specific issues you’re facing or what you want to be able to do may help you getting more specific solutions?

How do you judge which extension to install?

• I install as few extensions as possible, like Leraje mentioned already: I really consider if I need the extension or not. Because every single one of them is a potential security or failure risk. One extension may be cool; but if I don’t have some real need for it, I won’t be installing it. I will also consider native app solutions (I will use yt-dlp in a Terminal instead of using some web extension to easily download vids)
• When I’m interested in one extension, I consider if Firefox is recommending it or not. If not I may decided to not use it. May as it really depends how bad I need it and want to try it.
• I check the options of the extensions I’m already using

1. to disable whatever it is I don’t want
2. to enable extra features that may saves me the need to install more extensions. Because, once again, the fewer extensions I have to install, the better I am.

uBO (wikipedia) is an amazing example of that. (edit: I should probably say that I use it on Firefox which supports the extension without limitations, unlike Chrome-based browsers.)

Most people know it as one of the best, if not the best ad-blocker there is. Which it is. But it’s much more than that and it can also be used to get rid of cookie banners, url tracking, social media buttons removing (and their tracking), better privacy, I’m sure I’m forgetting some stuff. Heck, it can be used to easily block whatever content I may not want to see on any website. Say, I don’t want to see Shorts or News crap displayed on my YT homepage? That’s just two clicks away.

So, thx to uBO, I don’t need install a shit ton of other extensions I would otherwise be using to get the cleaner and less intrusive web experience I wish. And it only required me to do some reading and tweakings in its settings

What’s the best alternative to Google these days?

I use Kagi, it’s great (great results, no ads, no tracking, a lot of clever filtering tools) but it’s paid. Free, I would use Brave Search but I doesn’t give me as good results as Kagi.

Edit: added links.

I recently learned that my company prefers closed-source tools for privacy and security.

I will suggest that same logic to my banker too: a vault whose key they won’t own, but I will. Don’t worry, all your money will be safe with me, it’s a promise 😇

Aren’t they constantly? ;)