The Linux Experiment

Andy Yen, the CEO of Proton (Mail, Drive, VPN, Pass...) answered a lot of the questions you, the community, asked, in an interview that covers basically everything!

He discusses security, privacy, the origins of Proton, how they operate, Linux support, future projects, products and features, quantum computing, passkeys, and more!

Proton Mail: https://proton.me/mail/TheLinuxEXP Proton VPN: https://protonvpn.com/TheLinuxEXP

👏 SUPPORT THE CHANNEL: Get access to a weekly podcast, vote on the next topics I cover, and get your name in the credits:

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@thelinuxexp/join Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/thelinuxexperiment Liberapay: https://liberapay.com/TheLinuxExperiment/

Or, you can donate whatever you want: https://paypal.me/thelinuxexp

👕 GET TLE MERCH Support the channel AND get cool new gear: https://the-linux-experiment.creator-spring.com/

🎙️ LINUX AND OPEN SOURCE NEWS PODCAST: Listen to the latest Linux and open source news, with more in depth coverage, and ad-free! https://podcast.thelinuxexp.com

🏆 FOLLOW ME ELSEWHERE: Website: https://thelinuxexp.com Mastodon: https://mastodon.social/web/@thelinuxEXP Pixelfed: https://pixelfed.social/TLENick PeerTube: https://tilvids.com/c/thelinuxexperiment_channel/videos Discord: https://discord.gg/mdnHftjkja

#vpn #privacy #proton #onlinesecurity #protonmail

Timecodes:

00:00 Intro 01:16 How did Proton start? 03:24 Why start with email? 06:03 What is Proton's business model? 08:34 Why set up in Switzerland? 11:33 What data do you have on customers? 14:39 How is encryption important? 18:20 Do you always need to use a VPN? 20:47 Why focus on building an ecosystem? 24:55 Is an Office Suite planned? 26:29 What differentiates Proton from competitors? 30:26 Is Proton a viable alternative to big tech services? 33:31 Why expand to more products instead of finishing existing ones? 37:19 Does the general public care about privacy? 38:45 What's next for Proton services? 40:08 What are the plans for native Linux clients? 46:03 Will ProtonVPN offer dedicated IPs to everyone? 47:46 What's the environmental impact of Proton? 49:27 Proton on F-Droid, without Google Play notifications? 52:03 Why are code repos all separated and hard to find? 53:12 Why are addresses ending in ".me" ? 54:57 When will all apps reach feature parity? 56:24 Will SMTP relay be supported? 57:47 Will Proton focus more on businesses in the future? 59:50 Why put all your eggs in one basket with just Proton services? 01:01:00 Will Proton support passkeys? 01:03:21 Does E2E matter is the recipient isn't using it? 01:04:49 Will Proton disable port forwarding in VPN? 01:06:41 Is encryption enough to make email private? 01:09:06 What protects users from a change in Proton's code licensing? 01:11:14 How does Proton protect its infrastructure? 01:13:14 Impacts of Quantum Computing on privacy and security? 01:14:24 What's the future of Proton Bridge? 01:16:25 When will Proton photos be a thing? 01:17:17 Plans for Proton Notes? 01:18:20 Will VPN support the Apple TV? 01:21:12 Support the channel

Head to https://squarespace.com/thelinuxexperiment to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain using code thelinuxexperiment

Grab a brand new laptop or desktop running Linux: https://www.tuxedocomputers.com/en#

👏 SUPPORT THE CHANNEL: Get access to a weekly podcast, vote on the next topics I cover, and get your name in the credits:

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@thelinuxexp/join Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/thelinuxexperiment Liberapay: https://liberapay.com/TheLinuxExperiment/

Or, you can donate whatever you want: https://paypal.me/thelinuxexp

👕 GET TLE MERCH Support the channel AND get cool new gear: https://the-linux-experiment.creator-spring.com/

🎙️ LINUX AND OPEN SOURCE NEWS PODCAST: Listen to the latest Linux and open source news, with more in depth coverage, and ad-free! https://podcast.thelinuxexp.com

🏆 FOLLOW ME ELSEWHERE: Website: https://thelinuxexp.com Mastodon: https://mastodon.social/web/@thelinuxEXP Pixelfed: https://pixelfed.social/TLENick PeerTube: https://tilvids.com/c/thelinuxexperiment_channel/videos Discord: https://discord.gg/mdnHftjkja

#Linux #OpenSource #TechNews #Ubuntu

Timecodes: 00:00 Intro 00:36 Sponsor: 10% off your first ebsite with Squarespace 01:33 Linus Torvalds talks about the future of Linux 03:58 Ubuntu might drop older CPUs 06:57 LXQt working on Wayland as well 08:33 Cosmic gets more improvements 09:48 GNOME & KDE updates 11:45 Gaming: Linux beats Windows, No Fortnite on Linux 15:17 Sponsor: Get a PC made to run Linux 16:24 Support the channel

Linus Torvalds talks about the future of Linux

https://www.zdnet.com/article/linus-torvalds-on-state-of-linux-today-and-how-ai-figures-in-its-future/

Ubuntu might drop older CPUs

https://ubuntu.com/blog/optimising-ubuntu-performance-on-amd64-architecture

https://www.phoronix.com/news/Ubuntu-24.04-LTS-Desktop-Plans

LXQt working on Wayland as well

https://lubuntu.me/noble-alpha-featureset/

https://www.phoronix.com/news/Lubuntu-24.04-LTS-Plans

https://lubuntu.me/noble-alpha-featureset/

Cosmic gets more improvements

https://blog.system76.com/post/the-spirit-of-cosmic-december-updates

GNOME & KDE updates

https://pointieststick.com/2023/12/15/this-week-in-kde-un-flashy-important-stability-work/

https://thisweek.gnome.org/posts/2023/12/twig-126/

Gaming: Linux beats Windows, No Fortnite on Linux

https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2023/12/fortnite-on-linux-steam-deck-not-until-tens-of-millions-of-users/

https://steamcommunity.com/groups/SteamClientBeta/announcements/detail/3860211327585452520

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Windows-11-scores-dead-last-in-gaming-performance-tests-against-3-Linux-gaming-distros.778624.0.html

Try the new version of Thunderbird (it's now my email & calendar client of choice!): https://mzla.link/tb-flatpak

Grab a brand new laptop or desktop running Linux: https://www.tuxedocomputers.com/en#

👏 SUPPORT THE CHANNEL: Get access to a weekly podcast, vote on the next topics I cover, and get your name in the credits:

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@thelinuxexp/join Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/thelinuxexperiment Liberapay: https://liberapay.com/TheLinuxExperiment/

Or, you can donate whatever you want: https://paypal.me/thelinuxexp

👕 GET TLE MERCH Support the channel AND get cool new gear: https://the-linux-experiment.creator-spring.com/

🎙️ LINUX AND OPEN SOURCE NEWS PODCAST: Listen to the latest Linux and open source news, with more in depth coverage, and ad-free! https://podcast.thelinuxexp.com

🏆 FOLLOW ME ELSEWHERE: Website: https://thelinuxexp.com Mastodon: https://mastodon.social/web/@thelinuxEXP Pixelfed: https://pixelfed.social/TLENick PeerTube: https://tilvids.com/c/thelinuxexperiment_channel/videos Discord: https://discord.gg/mdnHftjkja

#Linux #OpenSource #TechNews

00:00 Intro 00:35 Sponsor: Thunderbird 01:29 GNOME might drop X11 entirely 03:36 Ubuntu 23.10 released 05:40 Mastodon has 400K more users than we thought 07:03 Plasma 6 & GNOME updates 08:34 Bottles Next improves running Windows apps on Linux 10:40 Gaming News: CS2 drops MacOS, Deck no longer top 10 12:52 Sponsor! Get a PC made to run Linux 14:21 Support the channel

GNOME might drop X11 entirely

https://linuxiac.com/gnome-is-taking-steps-towards-dropping-x11-support/

https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-session/-/merge_requests/98

Ubuntu 23.10 released

https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2023/10/ubuntu-23-10-installer-translations-hijack

https://youtu.be/6sA37fATUyg

Mastodon has 400K more users than we thought

https://techcrunch.com/2023/10/09/mastodon-actually-has-407k-more-monthly-users-than-it-thought/

Plasma 6 & GNOME updates

https://pointieststick.com/2023/10/13/this-week-in-kde-colorblindness-correction-filters/

https://thisweek.gnome.org/posts/2023/10/twig-117/

Bottles Next improves running Windows apps on Linux

https://linuxiac.com/bottles-next-revolutionizing-linux-emulation-for-windows-apps/

https://usebottles.com/blog/bottles-next-a-new-chapter/

Gaming News: CS2 drops MacOS, Deck no longer top 10, Wine 8.18

https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2023/10/after-over-80-weeks-the-steam-deck-leaves-the-top-10-global-sellers-on-steam/

https://www.winehq.org//announce/8.18

https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2023/10/valve-dropped-counter-strike-2-support-on-macos-and-older-hardware/

Try out Proton Mail, the secure email that protects your privacy: https://proton.me/mail/TheLinuxEXP

Grab a brand new laptop or desktop running Linux: https://www.tuxedocomputers.com/en#

👏 SUPPORT THE CHANNEL: Get access to a weekly podcast, vote on the next topics I cover, and get your name in the credits:

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@thelinuxexp/join Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/thelinuxexperiment Liberapay: https://liberapay.com/TheLinuxExperiment/

Or, you can donate whatever you want: https://paypal.me/thelinuxexp

👕 GET TLE MERCH Support the channel AND get cool new gear: https://the-linux-experiment.creator-spring.com/

🎙️ LINUX AND OPEN SOURCE NEWS PODCAST: Listen to the latest Linux and open source news, with more in depth coverage, and ad-free! https://podcast.thelinuxexp.com

🏆 FOLLOW ME ELSEWHERE: Website: https://thelinuxexp.com Mastodon: https://mastodon.social/web/@thelinuxEXP Pixelfed: https://pixelfed.social/TLENick PeerTube: https://tilvids.com/c/thelinuxexperiment_channel/videos Discord: https://discord.gg/mdnHftjkja

#Linux #security #cybersecurity

00:00 Intro 00:56 Sponsor: Proton Mail 02:32 Software and updates 04:04 Services and SSH 06:38 User management 10:10 Physical Security 11:35 SELinux, AppArmor, and firewall 14:04 Parting Thoughts 15:15 Sponsor: Get a PC made to run Linux 16:30 Support the channel

Password complexity tips: https://www.networkworld.com/article/2726217/how-to-enforce-password-complexity-on-linux.html

Tips to secure SSH: https://www.cyberciti.biz/tips/linux-unix-bsd-openssh-server-best-practices.html

The more software you use, the larger the attack surface for your Linux install is. It's always good to take a look at all the installed applications, and libraries, and remove what you don't use anymore. You can also remove packages that aren't linked to anything else and aren't used by anything.

On Debian or Ubuntu, for example, you can find these by running sudo apt autoremove

And on a desktop, you probably already apply updates, or your distro has auto updates enabled. But on a server, it's easy to let things slide, and forget to log in regularly and make sure things are up to date. I'm guilty of that myself.

And just like with packages, libraries, and apps, you should also make sure you only run the services you actually use. You can list all services running with:

systemctl list-unit-files

To stop a service you don't need, you can run

systemctl stop SERVICE

To stop the service from starting with the system, you can run

systemctl disable SERVICE

If you're on a server, the general rule of thumb is also NOT to run a graphical desktop on it. It will often be much more secure to use SSH to log in to the server remotely.

But you might also need to secure SSH first. If you have multiple users, make sure only the ones who need it have SSH access. To do that, you can edit the /etc/ssh/sshd_config file, and type AllowUsers then the names of the users that will actually have access to SSH.

Now, something that might be useful in general, for a server or a desktop, is making sure all the users are correctly handled. The first thing will be to disable root login.

If you decide to disable the root account, make sure at least one user has admin privileges though, or you'll have a system without any way to access any task with sudo. Once you're certain everything is ok, you can use the following method:

Edit /etc/passwd, and change the first line, by replacing /bin/bash, or whatever other shell root currently logs into, by /sbin/nologin (or /usr/sbin/nologin depending on the distro)

If you prefer, you can simply disable root login through SSH, so the account is still there if you want it locally, but remote attackers won't be able to login as root. To do so, you can edit /etc/ssh/sshd_config, and uncomment the PermitRootLogin line, and then set its value to no. Restart SSH with sytemctl restart sshd, and you're done.

To remove the ability to use USB, Thunderbolt or Firewire, you can add the following lines to their respective files (create them if need be). To revert this, just remove the lines that have been added in the various files by the commands.

Add: install usb-storage /bin/true to /etc/modprobe.d/disable-usb-storage.conf Add blacklist firewire-core to /etc/modprobe.d/firewire.conf Add blacklist thunderbolt to /etc/modprobe.d/thunderbolt.conf

Try the new Thunderbird release: https://www.thunderbird.net/

Grab a brand new laptop or desktop running Linux: https://www.tuxedocomputers.com/en#

👏 SUPPORT THE CHANNEL: Get access to a weekly podcast, vote on the next topics I cover, and get your name in the credits:

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@thelinuxexp/join Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/thelinuxexperiment Liberapay: https://liberapay.com/TheLinuxExperiment/

Or, you can donate whatever you want: https://paypal.me/thelinuxexp

👕 GET TLE MERCH Support the channel AND get cool new gear: https://the-linux-experiment.creator-spring.com/

🎙️ LINUX AND OPEN SOURCE NEWS PODCAST: Listen to the latest Linux and open source news, with more in depth coverage, and ad-free! https://podcast.thelinuxexp.com

🏆 FOLLOW ME ELSEWHERE: Website: https://thelinuxexp.com Mastodon: https://mastodon.social/web/@thelinuxEXP Pixelfed: https://pixelfed.social/TLENick PeerTube: https://tilvids.com/c/thelinuxexperiment_channel/videos Discord: https://discord.gg/mdnHftjkja

#Linux #OpenSource #apps

00:00 Intro 00:42 Sponsor: Try the new Thunderbird interface 01:35 Replace Obsidian 03:49 Replace Notion 06:40 Replace Teams and Slack 07:51 Replace Trello 09:24 Replace Acrobat Pro 10:33 Replace Visual Studio Code 11:47 Other alternatives 13:16 Sponsor: Get a PC made to run Linux 14:25 Support the channel

Obsidian offers the ability to link notes together, it uses markdown and plain text to store your notes, it has a plugin ecosystem, and the visual knowledge graph that lets you explore topics and the relationships between your notes. BUT it's proprietary, so we have Logseq. It takes notes as markdown files, it has more than 150 plugins, and a bunch of themes, it has mobile apps, it's private, and it does have the same linking features and knowledge graph.

It even lets you create queries to generate tables with all the information you need, based on the links and data you entered in your notes.Logseq even offers their own syncing solution if you want that. It's available for Linux, as an AppImage, and for macOS, Windows, iOS and Android.

Another really powerful app is Notion. While it's free of charge, it's also proprietary and doesn't have an official Linux version.

The closest thing you can find in the open source world will be AppFlowy, and while it's really close, it's not as feature complete just yet. You can create your own structure, with pages and subpages, and you have a few page types, like calendars, boards, tables, or documents. You also can mix these types on the same page, like having a board with cards, that you can also present in a table, or on a calendar, but you won't get as many templates as what Notion offers.

If you want a more full featured app, there's AnyType instead. It's also open source, and has a Linux client and mobile apps, but the interface is a bit more involved and less clear to start with than AppFLowy.

Now this one, you might not have as much control over, generally, a company or project will impose Slack or Microsoft Teams on you. But if you have all the power, then you might want to take a look at Mattermost.

It's a fully open source Slack / MS Teams alternative, that you can self host. It lets you create channels, and chat, with side threads, file sharing, screen sharing, and audio calls. It can be integrated with a bunch of developer tools to automate things, you can format messages with markdown, or code snippets, and all messages can be archived, with full history search.

If all you need to organize yourself is a board, you might use Trello. This one is pretty easy to replace: you can just use Focalboard. You can either self host it if you want to let multiple people access the same board, or you can just use it as a personal app, with a macOS, Windows and Linux application.

If you need to create and edit PDF documents, you might use Acrobat Pro, from Adobe. You can always open them in GIMP, Inkscape, of LibreOffice Draw, but these tend to either open a single page, or break the document's formatting. Libreoffice draw does a great job IF you have all the fonts used in the PDF installed on your system , but editing text is generally handled in a line per line basis, instead of recognizing things as paragraphs, which can be a pain to deal with.

Visual Studio Code's ... code is licensed under the MIT license, so it IS an open source / free software project, but the binary you can get from Microsoft isn't open source. The alternative, thus, is easy: VSCodium. It's built on the open source parts of VS Code, but removes all the tracking, telemetry and proprietary components. It's compatible with VS Code's plugins and extensions, and has the exact same interface and features, but in a nice open source form.

Learn how to deal with a ransomware attack with this free whitepaper: https://bit.ly/44cNIcr

Grab a brand new laptop or desktop running Linux: https://www.tuxedocomputers.com/en#

👏 SUPPORT THE CHANNEL: Get access to a weekly podcast, vote on the next topics I cover, and get your name in the credits:

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@thelinuxexp/join Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/thelinuxexperiment Liberapay: https://liberapay.com/TheLinuxExperiment/

Or, you can donate whatever you want: https://paypal.me/thelinuxexp

👕 GET TLE MERCH Support the channel AND get cool new gear: https://the-linux-experiment.creator-spring.com/

🎙️ LINUX AND OPEN SOURCE NEWS PODCAST: Listen to the latest Linux and open source news, with more in depth coverage, and ad-free! https://podcast.thelinuxexp.com

🏆 FOLLOW ME ELSEWHERE: Website: https://thelinuxexp.com Mastodon: https://mastodon.social/web/@thelinuxEXP Pixelfed: https://pixelfed.social/TLENick PeerTube: https://tilvids.com/c/thelinuxexperiment_channel/videos Discord: https://discord.gg/XMuQrcYd

#internet #ads #marketingdigital

00:00 Intro 00:44 Sponsor: Learn how to deal with ransomware attacks 01:32 The ad-based internet 04:08 Twitter: anything but the kitchen sink 05:46 Reddit: shooting themselves in the foot 07:14 Youtube: nickel and diming 08:58 Alternative platforms won't save us 11:43 Three possible outcomes 14:41 The Ad Based internet is on its way out 15:13 Sponsor: Get a PC that was made to run Linux 16:02 Support the channel

Google has shown that with enough scale, just running ads on a website is enough to keep the content free of charge. But of course, as with everything where money is involved, it went way too far. This limited the ad revenue, and so websites decided to add more ads.

To compound that, ads started paying less and less, so websites started chasing profits by making the internet worse for everyone.

Twitter's revenue is 89% ads. It has existed for more than 10 years, and has never made any money. So even at that scale, ads are just not working to sustain a company.

All the changes Musk is making to Twitter, like firing most of the workforce, charging for the API, limiting the number of tweets, Twitter Blue, it's all to try and turn a profit. So, the experience of Twitter is now ten times worse, because ads don't work.

Now let's look at Reddit. Reddit is about as popular as Twitter. And Reddit isn't profitable either. They're kept afloat by raising money from investors. And so Reddit charges for their API now. Reddit made their site worse for everyone: the regular users, and also everyone browsing the internet and landing on reddit to see a "this subreddit is private" message, making any web search ultra inefficient.

And we can also look at Youtube. Youtube is HUGE. And it's hard to know if youtube is profitable or not. The consensus seems to be that it is, but the actions of youtube seem to indicate that maybe it's not THAT profitable. For example, youtube seems to be planning some moves against adblockers. Youtube is also taking steps against third party frontends, like Invidious. They wouldn't do stuff like that if profit growth was awesome.

I love alternative platforms, but they'll probably never replace the giant ones: they don't offer a business model for people to create content on them.

As a user, you probably don't care about that. And the person running the instance of said platform maybe is ready to fund it out of pocket, but the people creating the content on these platforms? They're not making money from them.

And so as ad-based internet models start dying off, I have a feeling we're going to be faced with 3 options

First, the big platforms survive as-is with the ads, you can still have ads on your own website, but the platforms will start keeping more and more of the ad revenue.

This is where we're heading now. People are tired of ads and their privacy invasion, and the over abundance of them, but platforms seem to think this is the way to go.

Second option, the big platforms and websites evolve to another model, like paywalling everything behind a paid subscriptions like Youtube Premium.

It would basically kill off an entire portion of the internet, but it probably wouldn't be the worst portion to lose.

Third option, the big platforms and the internet as a whole can't find a new model to replace ad based ones, and big platforms and big websites die off. Content creation becomes a hobby mostly.

This is probably the best outcome for the internet as a whole, as it would probably kill off most clickbait, disinformation, AI generated crap. We would have far less things to read and watch, but a lot of if would be higher quality.

Download Safing's Portmaster and take control of your network traffic: https://safing.io

Grab a brand new laptop or desktop running Linux: https://www.tuxedocomputers.com/en#

👏 SUPPORT THE CHANNEL: Get access to a weekly podcast, vote on the next topics I cover, and get your name in the credits:

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@thelinuxexp/join Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/thelinuxexperiment Liberapay: https://liberapay.com/TheLinuxExperiment/

Or, you can donate whatever you want: https://paypal.me/thelinuxexp

👕 GET TLE MERCH Support the channel AND get cool new gear: https://the-linux-experiment.creator-spring.com/

🎙️ LINUX AND OPEN SOURCE NEWS PODCAST: Listen to the latest Linux and open source news, with more in depth coverage, and ad-free! https://podcast.thelinuxexp.com

🏆 FOLLOW ME ELSEWHERE: Website: https://thelinuxexp.com Mastodon: https://mastodon.social/web/@thelinuxEXP Pixelfed: https://pixelfed.social/TLENick PeerTube: https://tilvids.com/c/thelinuxexperiment_channel/videos Discord: https://discord.gg/XMuQrcYd

#Linux #OpenSource #TechNews

00:00 Intro 00:38 Sponsor: Regain control of your internet connection 01:35 Ubuntu's new app store favors snaps over debs 03:36 GNOME 45 alpha is out 05:09 Fedora plans to add telemetry 06:59 Canonical takes control of the Linux Container Daemon 08:13 Ubuntu will let you pick the apps you want at install 09:39 Solus 4.4 and Budgie 11 news 11:24 Gaming News: Steam Deck wins Linux gaming, Steam beta 12:44 Sponsor: Get a PC that was made to run Linux 13:43 Support the channel

Ubuntu's new app store favors snaps over debs

https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2023/07/ubuntu-23-10-new-app-store-deb-support

GNOME 45 alpha is out

https://9to5linux.com/gnome-45-alpha-is-now-available-for-public-testing-heres-whats-new

Fedora plans to add telemetry

https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/devel@lists.fedoraproject.org/thread/55H3DT5CCL73HLMQJ6DK63KCAHZWO7SX/

https://linuxiac.com/fedora-40-plans-to-use-telemetry/

https://blogs.gnome.org/wjjt/2023/07/05/endless-oss-privacy-preserving-metrics-system/

Canonical takes control of the Linux Container Daemon

https://linuxcontainers.org/lxd/

https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2023/07/canonical-takes-full-control-of-lxd

https://linuxiac.com/lxd-containers-project-goes-under-canonical-wing/

Ubuntu will let you pick the apps you want at install

https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2023/07/ubuntu-new-unified-install-plans-sound-meh

https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/rethinking-ubuntu-desktop-a-more-thoughtful-default-installation/36736

Solus 4.4 and Budgie 11 News

https://linuxiac.com/solus-os-4-4-released/

https://blog.buddiesofbudgie.org/wayland/

Gaming News: Steam Deck wins Linux gaming, Steam beta

https://store.steampowered.com/news/group/4397053/view/3666541770799548342

https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2023/07/nearly-40-of-linux-gamers-on-steam-are-on-steam-deck/

https://www.phoronix.com/news/AMD-CPU-Linux-Gaming-67p

Stream any OS, desktop, or app to your browser, now with translations: https://kasmweb.com/docs/develop/developers/builds.html

Grab a brand new laptop or desktop running Linux: https://www.tuxedocomputers.com/en#

👏 SUPPORT THE CHANNEL: Get access to a weekly podcast, vote on the next topics I cover, and get your name in the credits:

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@thelinuxexp/join Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/thelinuxexperiment Liberapay: https://liberapay.com/TheLinuxExperiment/

Or, you can donate whatever you want: https://paypal.me/thelinuxexp

👕 GET TLE MERCH Support the channel AND get cool new gear: https://the-linux-experiment.creator-spring.com/

🎙️ LINUX AND OPEN SOURCE NEWS PODCAST: Listen to the latest Linux and open source news, with more in depth coverage, and ad-free! https://podcast.thelinuxexp.com

🏆 FOLLOW ME ELSEWHERE: Website: https://thelinuxexp.com Mastodon: https://mastodon.social/web/@thelinuxEXP Pixelfed: https://pixelfed.social/TLENick PeerTube: https://tilvids.com/c/thelinuxexperiment_channel/videos Discord: https://discord.gg/XMuQrcYd

#Linux #linuxdistro #operatingsystem

00:00 Intro 00:35 Sponsor: Stream any OS, desktop or app to any PC 01:29 The Classic Linux Distro Model 02:57 Why it's broken 04:25 Distros are moving away 05:52 The new model isn't perfect, but still better 08:31 All other OSes do this 09:22 Why distros package apps in the first place 10:14 Universal Packages 11:40 You don't have a choice 13:32 Sponsor: Get a PC made to run Linux 14:27 Support the channel

This video was inspired by the following blog post, which echoed my sentiment and ideas exactly: https://www.ypsidanger.com/the-distribution-model-is-changing/

The distro packages the software for their users. Not the developers of the software, the distro itself. So the distro has a decent amount of control over what they offer, but the users of the distro don't, and the developers of the apps also don't. And this model doesn't really work.

On the surface, for users, it does work. You get a lot of applications from a central repo, and the system is generally pretty stable, depending on the distro you pick. But in the background, you have the thousands of orphaned packages that are still in the repos but aren't maintained. The old apps that can't be packaged at all anymore. The maintainers spending a lot of time repackaging and recompiling software that has already been packaged.

One might not like Ubuntu's snap packages, or Flatpak, or AppImages, but it's undeniable that most distros are moving towards them.

When Ubuntu moves Firefox and Chromium from a deb package to a snap, it's a GOOD THING. For Ubuntu. Because instead of having to package each new version of Firefox or CHromium for all currently supported versions of Ubuntu, they only have to package them once.

Same thing when Red Hat drops the LibreOffice RPM in favor of the Flatpak. Not having to package that behemoth of an app will free up time for Red Hat developers to work on HDR, improving Wayland, and supporting color management.

And moving the packaging of an app from the distro to the app developer means less time spent debugging stuff, and more time spend on improving the app.

So why did Linux distros start packaging software instead of app developers?

It was because there were so many different systems using the same packaging formats, deb or RPM or whatever else, but different libraries, kernels, drivers, and everything else, that app developers simply did not have a way to distribute their own software to every distro.

But nowadays, we DO have formats that let you distribute applications everywhere with one single package.

They lack some features, especially due to the sandboxing they tend to use, that limits how they can interact with other apps. Thing is, these formats are still under heavy development.

But the real question is: do you prefer staying on the current model where we stagnate, duplicate work, and where developers and users have no control over which version of the software is used, or would you rather face a few teething issues, but let developers improve their apps, and the whole of the Linux software ecosystem?

I know what I choose, and it's not these old packages. And presumably, if you stick to mainstream distros, like Fedora, Ubuntu, or their main derivatives, chances are you're not going to have a choice either. Because whether you like it or not, we're moving to Flatpak or Snap on most distros.

It's more efficient, and their current problems can and will be fixed. The duplication of work that legacy packaging creates is unfixable, it's a structural problem.

And of course, if you hate these universal packaging formats, I'm sure you'll still be able to find a lot of distros that will not move to them even in the future. You'll just be running the non official version of an app, just like what you're doing right now when using a distro's package.

Give a shot to the Translations Developer Preview for Kasm Workspaces: https://kasmweb.com/docs/develop/developers/builds.html

Grab a brand new laptop or desktop running Linux: https://www.tuxedocomputers.com/en#

👏 SUPPORT THE CHANNEL: Get access to a weekly podcast, vote on the next topics I cover, and get your name in the credits:

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@thelinuxexp/join Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/thelinuxexperiment Liberapay: https://liberapay.com/TheLinuxExperiment/

Or, you can donate whatever you want: https://paypal.me/thelinuxexp

👕 GET TLE MERCH Support the channel AND get cool new gear: https://the-linux-experiment.creator-spring.com/

🎙️ LINUX AND OPEN SOURCE NEWS PODCAST: Listen to the latest Linux and open source news, with more in depth coverage, and ad-free! https://podcast.thelinuxexp.com

🏆 FOLLOW ME ELSEWHERE: Website: https://thelinuxexp.com Mastodon: https://mastodon.social/web/@thelinuxEXP Pixelfed: https://pixelfed.social/TLENick PeerTube: https://tilvids.com/c/thelinuxexperiment_channel/videos Discord: https://discord.gg/XMuQrcYd

#linuxmint #linuxdistro #linux

00:00 Intro 00:30 Sponsor: Stream any OS, desktop, or app to your browser 01:24 Touchpad Gestures 03:43 Look & Feel 06:26 Desktop & Apps 10:12 Internals 11:00 XFCE and MATE variants 13:35 Parting Thoughts 15:13 Sponsor: Get a PC that runs Linux perfectly 16:30 Support the channel

If you got used to the super smooth 1:1 gestures for GNOME or Plasma on Wayland, or even elementary OS on X11, you'll be disappointed here. Mint still uses X11, and their gestures act like keyboard shortcuts. You perform the gesture on the touchpad, and once your fingers have moved enough, the animation happens all at once.

Gestures are disabled by default, you'll be able to enable them in the new Settings panel. They are very configurable though, contrary to GNOME or KDE.

Mint 21.2 also changes a few things in terms of how the distro looks, or can look. First, instead of the endless list of selectable themes, in their dark or light variant, and all their color variants, you now get Styles.

The Style defines the theme you're using, for example MintY, Adwaita, or the older Mint X. For each style, you can pick mixed mode, where apps can be light or dark at the same time, dark mode, where every app that supports the dark mode preference will use it, and light mode.

And on top of that, you have a choice of accent colors, if the theme supports it, for example, there are no accent colors for Adwaita, or the High COntrast theme.

Folder icons are now longer the same color as what WIndows uses, they'll now use your accent color instead, which is much better in my opinion.

On the desktop side of things, the login screen received a lot of improvements, with support for multiple keyboard layouts that you can switch between, and support for tap to click as well.

The onscreen keyboard is usable there, and you can also configure the layout for it, and you can now more easily navigate this login screen using the keyboard and the arrow keys.

Once you're logged in, you can now resize the main menu, by dragging its corner or its edge, and you can now disable notifications for connected devices that have a low battery level.

As per the apps, the file manager, Nemo, now generates thumbnails using multi threading, which means it should be way faster.

The software manager got a small UI refresh, with the search field inline in a headerbar, with the hamburger menu moving there as well. The app pages also got a small redesign, with buttons in the header to install, and to show the installation source.

Pix, the image viewer, got a lot of changes, mostly due to its rebase on a new version of GTHumb.

Finally, Warpinator, the PC to PC file transfer program, was reviewed by the openSUSE team, and some security issues were discovered and fixed.

All Linux Mint editions are still based on Ubuntu 22.04, and they're all LTS, supported until 2027. The next base change will be when Ubuntu 24.04 releases, which means that in the meantime, you get the Linux kernel 5.15, and older Mesa and Nvidia drivers.

Now, for the XFCE variant, you get the same improvements to the login screen, the apps and the software manager, plus the new colored folder icons, tooltips and notifications, and the symbolic icon changes. You're not getting the Styles manager and selector though, and you're not getting the touchpad gestures either.

Still, you do get XFCE 4.18, which is a solid update over 4.16 that Mint used in the previous release.

As per MATE, it gets the same stuff as XFCE, so no gestures or style manager, and it's still on MATE 1.26, same as the previous Linux Mint release.

Download Safing's Portmaster and take control of your network traffic: https://safing.io

👏 SUPPORT THE CHANNEL: Get access to a weekly podcast, vote on the next topics I cover, and get your name in the credits:

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@thelinuxexp/join Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/thelinuxexperiment Liberapay: https://liberapay.com/TheLinuxExperiment/

Or, you can donate whatever you want: https://paypal.me/thelinuxexp

👕 GET TLE MERCH Support the channel AND get cool new gear: https://the-linux-experiment.creator-spring.com/

🎙️ LINUX AND OPEN SOURCE NEWS PODCAST: Listen to the latest Linux and open source news: https://podcast.thelinuxexp.com

🏆 FOLLOW ME ELSEWHERE: Website: https://thelinuxexp.com Mastodon: https://mastodon.social/web/@thelinuxEXP Pixelfed: https://pixelfed.social/TLENick PeerTube: https://tilvids.com/c/thelinuxexperiment_channel/videos Discord: https://discord.gg/mdnHftjkja

#steamdeck #steam #linuxgaming

00:00 Intro 00:45 Sponsor: Secure your internet connection 01:43 What I wanted from this SteamOS Console 02:48 Console in name only 04:39 The specs 06:03 SteamOS / HoloISO: not easy 11:40 Performance: top notch 14:10 Not worth it, but I love it! 15:51 Support the channel

Fix for AMD GPU bad performance https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=271286

I went for a Micro ATX PC, which means that, yes, it doesn't look like a console, but it was easy to install the GPU, it has ample room for cooling, and it sort of fits in my TV cabinet, so who cares. It's a Tuxedo Cube.

So here I have an intel core i7 12700,. I have 32Gigs of 3200Mhz RAM, I have a 1TB PCIE4 SSD, with a 750W modular power supply. For the GPU, I got a Radeon 6650XT off Amazon for 300 euros. The total cost is a bit less than 1400€, which isn't cheap.

On it, I installed HoloISO, which had issues: First, the default kernel they pick doesn't work with a lot of hardware, it lacks support for a bunch of things, so I had no Wifi and no Bluetooth support. Fortunately, they also ship with the holoiso kernel, which is more mainline, and does support a lot more things. You can select it during boot, with GRUB.

So I turned to the controversial Grub customizer, that's a graphical app that lets you tweak your grub boot options. HoloISO, like SteamOS, is based on Arch, but they don't really ship a correct pacman config with the correct repos, so I had to manually edit the pacman config to add the necessary repos to it, and then run a full system update, followed by the install of Grub Customizer.

And it flat out didn't work, it couldn't open the grub config file. That's because that file is preconfigured with conditions to boot with specific options on certain devices. I just commented all these conditions, and then Grub Customizer managed to open the file, and I could set the HoloISO kernel as the default boot option.

All games ran at 720P max. Of course, a simple web search gave me the answer, it's because SteamOS is meant for the steam deck, but you can change all that in the game's properties to select the max resolution you'll allow.

Then, the performance was horrible. I couldn't manage 1080p60 in Spiderman at medium details, Jedi Fallen Order had to run at 768p on medium to even get close to 60FPS, it was a mess, and this system should have been able to give me a lot more.

After a few hours of looking online, I found a solution: some AMD cards on Linux run in low power mode by default, and don't move to full power when you need them to.

But how's the performance then? Well, I can play virtually everything at least at 1440P, max settings at a smooth 60FPS.

I've completed a full playthrough of Spiderman, also running at 1440p high settings, upscaled to 4K through in game FSR. I've played about 13h of Cyberpunk at max details, 1440p upscaled to 4K through the in game FSR, with sharpness turned to the max, and it maintains 60FPS no problem, even when driving around in the city.

I played about a third of Red Dead Redemption 2, also running at 1440p, high settings, upscaled to 4K through HoloISO, at a smooth 60 fps as well. Everything can run at 4K High details, from 50 to 60 FPS.

And so this makes this console a better performer than a PS5, because PS5 rarely runs AAA games at 4K60, generally, if you want 4K high details, you're using quality mode, and you're running at 30FPS, not 60.

The performance mode on PS5 generally runs games at 1440p, and either medium or high details.

Cost wise, compared to a PS5, it's very expensive for a marginal visual improvement. And yet, I love it, and I plan to play everything I can on this and not on the PS5.

Because it runs Linux, and I love Linux. It also works with an Xbox controller, which I prefer to the dualsense 5. Also, my game library is mostly in Steam these days. I can also start a playthrough on my TV, and then pick up my Steam Deck, make sure my saves are synced, and go play on that outside, or in bed, or on holidays.

Head to https://squarespace.com/thelinuxexperiment to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain using code thelinuxexperiment

👏 SUPPORT THE CHANNEL: Get access to a weekly podcast, vote on the next topics I cover, and get your name in the credits:

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@thelinuxexp/join Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/thelinuxexperiment Liberapay: https://liberapay.com/TheLinuxExperiment/

Or, you can donate whatever you want: https://paypal.me/thelinuxexp

👕 GET TLE MERCH Support the channel AND get cool new gear: https://the-linux-experiment.creator-spring.com/

🎙️ LINUX AND OPEN SOURCE NEWS PODCAST: Listen to the latest Linux and open source news, with more in depth coverage, and ad-free! https://podcast.thelinuxexp.com

🏆 FOLLOW ME ELSEWHERE: Website: https://thelinuxexp.com Mastodon: https://mastodon.social/web/@thelinuxEXP Pixelfed: https://pixelfed.social/TLENick PeerTube: https://tilvids.com/c/thelinuxexperiment_channel/videos Discord: https://discord.gg/XMuQrcYd

Tuxedo Computers: https://www.tuxedocomputers.com/en#

#Linux #Tuxedo #stellaris

00:00 Intro 00:28 Sponsor: 10% off your first website with Squarespace 01:22 What is Tuxedo OS? 02:24 Better hardware support and drivers 04:06 Semi-Rolling: the best of both worlds 05:03 Tuxedo Control Center 06:32 Other changes 07:49 Is it any good? 08:49 Stellaris 16: Linux gaming laptop 13:56 Tuxedo OS on a Tuxedo PC

Tuxedo OS is a semi-rolling release Linux distro that Tuxedo makes, and is freely available to download on any computer.

Tuxedo OS comes with KDE plasma, it gets rid of snaps, they have their own repos for additional drivers and apps, they have a hybrid rolling release model for the desktop and drivers, they have their own custom kernel with better hardware support, and a few very useful utilities.

The repos contain their custom kernel, which include patches that they tested and implemented before the mainline kernel, so newer hardware works better. The fixes they develop themselves are also mainlined of course.

The Tuxedo OS repos include more up to date drivers, they have firmware for their own devices, they have packages for web browsers that Ubuntu only provides as Snaps, and for a few up to date apps that aren't in the Ubuntu repos, or are outdated.

While the base system and base packages are from Ubuntu, they ship drivers, a linux kernel, and the KDE plasma desktop on a rolling release model, which means you're always getting the latest versions of your KDE apps and desktop, and a recent kernel version, and the associated drivers.

Tuxedo OS also embarks the Tuxedo Control center. It's an open source graphical app that lets you set your power profile, between a few presets, like extreme powersave, high performance, quiet, and more. You can also change the battery charging options to improve the battery's lifespan.

Tuxedo OS enables os-prober. In the boot options, you'll find a web based reinstall option as well.

The Stellaris 16 is the latest entry in the Stellaris line. It comes with a 16:10 2560 x 1600 panel, that has very vivid colors, 350 nits of brightness, and perfect viewing angles. It can also refresh at 240hz.

You also get a core i9 13900HX, which is a 16 core, 32 threads CPU, that can go up to 5.4Ghz. https://browser.geekbench.com/v6/cpu/1651175

You can pair that with an RTX 4060 Mobile, or up to a 4090,.

RAM options go from 16 GB of 4800Mhz DDR5 to 64 gigs of 5600mhz DDR5, and for storage, you can get up to 2 4terabytes PCIE 4 SSDs.

In terms of ports, you get 2 USB A 3.2gen 2 ports, one USB A 3.2 gen 1, a full size SD card slot, a headphone jack,, the ports for the Aquaris cooling sytem, HDMI 2.1, 2.5 gigs ethernet, and Thunderbolt 4.

The keyboard is really excellent, with good key travel, and a quiet sound. You can also get it with a mechanical keyboard.

THe touchpad isn't glass, but it's very smooth, even though it's really small for this form factor.

Speakers are decent, with a good amount of bass, but they'll start saturating at max volume. They're bottom firing so if you place the laptop on a soft surface, you'll muffle them easily.

And the mic and webcam are potato quality as is unfortunately too often the case.

As per battery life, you get a 99Wh battery, on the powersave mode, using the integrated GPU, it lasted for 7 hours with youtube videos playing in a loop over wifi in Firefox, with the display at 240hz.

So, on a Tuxedo computer, you get a few cool things on top of the default Tuxedo experience.

You can control the color and brightness of the keyboard backlight, you can control the webcam, and its resolution, framerate, brightness, contrast, exposure, dynamic range, color balance.

TOMTE automatically recognizes the model you're using, and it checks for the drivers and packages that will give you the best experience.

Try out Proton Mail, the secure email that protects your privacy: https://proton.me/mail/TheLinuxEXP

Grab a brand new laptop or desktop running Linux: https://www.tuxedocomputers.com/en#

👏 SUPPORT THE CHANNEL: Get access to a weekly podcast, vote on the next topics I cover, and get your name in the credits:

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@thelinuxexp/join Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/thelinuxexperiment Liberapay: https://liberapay.com/TheLinuxExperiment/

Or, you can donate whatever you want: https://paypal.me/thelinuxexp

👕 GET TLE MERCH Support the channel AND get cool new gear: https://the-linux-experiment.creator-spring.com/

🎙️ LINUX AND OPEN SOURCE NEWS PODCAST: Listen to the latest Linux and open source news, with more in depth coverage, and ad-free! https://podcast.thelinuxexp.com

🏆 FOLLOW ME ELSEWHERE: Website: https://thelinuxexp.com Mastodon: https://mastodon.social/web/@thelinuxEXP Pixelfed: https://pixelfed.social/TLENick PeerTube: https://tilvids.com/c/thelinuxexperiment_channel/videos Discord: https://discord.gg/XMuQrcYd

#privacy #linux #webbrowser

00:00 Intro 00:37 Sponsor: Proton Mail, the private and encrypted email service 01:51 What's Browser Privacy 03:03 Google Chrome 05:14 Mozilla Firefox & LibreWolf 07:11 Brave 09:14 Tor Browser 10:51 Microsoft Edge 11:57 Opera 12:56 Vivaldi 14:07 What should you use? 15:05 Sponsor: Get a PC that was made to run Linux 16:02 Support the channel

So, Chrome is THE most used browser in the world, on mobile, and on desktop. Out of the box, it doesn't have an ad blocker, or a tracker blocker enabled. To use that browser to the fullest, you'll also need to use a Google Account, and thus everything you do in your browser will be collected unless you specifically disable it.

You can disable a lot of things in your Google account and the web browser settings, but you'll need to download extensions to block the most invasive trackers and limit fingerprinting. Chrome is also not open source.

On Privacy tests.org, we can also see that Chrome has weak fingerprinting resistance.

Firefox has a good reputation for privacy, but it's not the best choice either. By default, it collects telemetry data, including how many tabs you have open, how many windows, how many webpages you visit, the number and type of extensions, duration of your browsing sessions, and some technical data on your OS, the version of the browser, the language, and your IP address in their server logs. Firefox can also use this data to recommend extensions to you.

In terms of protections, Firefox doesn't block tracking scripts or pixels but it does block social media trackers, cross site cookies, cryptominers, plus all tracking when you're in incognito mode. Firefox is open source, so you can be reasonably sure that it doesn't collect more than what it tells you.

If you like Firefox but you don't want the telemetry, and you want improved fingerprinting protection, then there's Librewolf.

Brave offers a lot of what you'd be able to do in another browser with extensions, but it does so out of the box. They call them "shields", and they block ads, trackers, fingerprinters, and cross site cookies by default. They also auto redirect GOogle's AMP pages to the "real" website, and they redirect tracking URLs so you're not even visiting the tracking domain at all.

The ultimate private browser is probably Tor Browser, but it won't be for everyone. Tor Browser blocks everything that the website might want to learn about you, so there's no tracking at all, and no fingerprinting, but ads aren't blocked.

Edge is based on CHromium, the base for CHrome, but they remove everything Google related from it, to mostly replace it with Microsoft related things, like a Microsoft account.

Edge, by default, has an opt-out for telemetry. It will block trackers from third party sites, and some ad trackers as well. It also collects "required" diagnostic data that can't opt out of, and this data is used to personalize ads from microsoft. If you use a microsoft account, you'll also give MS a bunch of data in the process, including device information, usage data, browsing activity, bookmarks and more.

Opera is yet another chromium based browser, which gets the worst results on privacytests.org. It has a unique fingerprint, and doesn't block tracking scripts, or pixels, it doesn't resist fingerprinting, it doesn't remove tracking parameters, and it also doesn't block the major tracking cookies.

It doesn't send "do not track" signals by default either. Their privacy policy also states that they might share personal data with third parties, which can be worrying, as Opera has been bought by a chinese consortium in 2016.

Vivaldi is also a chromium based browser. At first start, it will ask you what you want to block.

Vivaldi doesn't collect any data, browsing history or anything else, even if you use a Vivaldi account, because everything is encrypted in there.

Quick post to recap the #Fediverse tools I use (in case you’re interested):

- Pixelfed: @TLENick it’s mostly pics of my city and the coast around it, sometimes of my office for the day
- News podcast: @tlenewspodcast using Castopod, weekly Linux and FOSS News podcast
- Videos: @thelinuxexperiment_channel All my YouTube videos, also available on Peertube (generally 1h after their initial publication on YT)

That should be it!

Download the free report on managing cyber threats using the MITRE ATT&CK framework and live patching: https://bit.ly/41zVI5O

Grab a brand new laptop or desktop running Linux: https://www.tuxedocomputers.com/en#

👏 SUPPORT THE CHANNEL: Get access to a weekly podcast, vote on the next topics I cover, and get your name in the credits:

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@thelinuxexp/join Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/thelinuxexperiment Liberapay: https://liberapay.com/TheLinuxExperiment/

Or, you can donate whatever you want: https://paypal.me/thelinuxexp

👕 GET TLE MERCH Support the channel AND get cool new gear: https://the-linux-experiment.creator-spring.com/

🎙️ LINUX AND OPEN SOURCE NEWS PODCAST: Listen to the latest Linux and open source news, with more in depth coverage, and ad-free! https://podcast.thelinuxexp.com

🏆 FOLLOW ME ELSEWHERE: Website: https://thelinuxexp.com Mastodon: https://mastodon.social/web/@thelinuxEXP Pixelfed: https://pixelfed.social/TLENick Twitter : http://twitter.com/thelinuxEXP PeerTube: https://tilvids.com/c/thelinuxexperiment_channel/videos

This video is distributed under the Creative Commons Share Alike license.

#nvidia #linux #gpu

00:00 Intro 00:46 Sponsor: Free report on cybersecurity with the MITRE ATT&CK framework 01:26 Nvidia Drivers 03:27 Screen Tearing 06:04 Multi Monitor support 07:34 Hybrid graphics 10:10 Wayland Support 11:48 Power Management 13:04 It's not the whole story 14:09 Why would anyone pick Nvidia, though? 15:26 Sponsor: Get a PC that runs Linux perfectly, from Tuxedo 16:19 Support the channel

Drivers are a one click install from the graphical app store. DO NOT install them manually from the nvidia website, and don't mess with kernels that your distro doesn't officially pack.

So, a first big issue people report with nvidia drivers is Screen tearing. I plugged my desktop's RTX 3070 into a basic 1080p monitor. That desktop uses X11, and tearing just isn't a thing here.

Now, if I launch a game to see how well things go, for example Darktide, with v sync off, we can clearly see some big tearing happening. With vsync on, it disappears.

If you still have tearing, you can auto start a command when your computer starts, with the following command line:

nvidia-settings --assign CurrentMetaMode="nvidia-auto-select +0+0 {ForceFullCompositionPipeline=On}"

Add that command to your startup applications, and you're done.

But how about multi monitor support? I plugged my laptop running Wayland, into the same external monitor, the basic 1080p one, using the hdmi port that's connected to the nvidia dedicated GPU. Nothing to say here, it just works.

I also plugged in 2 displays onto my desktop, the 1080p one, and my usual 1440p ultrawide, straight into the RTX3070.

No problems here, both displays are detected immediately. Same experience with KDE Plasma, no issues to report here, multi monitor support works normally.

Now, another thing people tend to hold against nvidia drivers is the hybrid graphics support, as in you have a laptop with a dedicated GPU from Nvidia, and an AMD integrated chip, or an Intel one.

On Wayland, it seems that hybrid mode is the default, and the only mode you can use, I could not find a way to move it back to the intel GPU only, or Nvidia only. Hybrid mode works perfectly.

On X11, the experience is pretty much the same. Hybrid mode is the default, and you do get a bunch more options in the nvidia control panel.

Nvidia has the reputation of not working with Wayland, but that's not true anymore. Everything works as it would on a normal wayland session: touchpad gestures, no screen tearing, fractional scaling support, screen sharing and recording, and running any application. Same experience on KDE with Wayland, it just works.

On my laptop, closing the lid will suspend the laptop. But very regularly, opening the lid doesn't wake the laptop back up, and I get a black screen.

I can get out of it by just getting into a TTY, then moving back to TTY1, and I'm good, but it's not what I'd call a smooth experience.

On my desktop, running Fedora also but with X11, suspend works perfectly, and resuming also happens without any issues.

All my tests are done using the latest nvidia drivers available on Fedora 37 with GNOME, and on Ubuntu 22.10 with KDE 5.25, and all these devices have relatively recent Nvidia GPUs. So it's only 2 distros, 2 desktop environments, and 3 different cards from the same generation.

Support for older GPUs, like the RTX10 series, or older ones, might not be as good, and might require you to use older legacy drivers, which very probably won't support Wayland, and might have more issues.

Head to https://squarespace.com/thelinuxexperiment to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain using code thelinuxexperiment

Grab a brand new laptop or desktop running Linux:https://www.tuxedocomputers.com/en#

👏 SUPPORT THE CHANNEL: Get access to a weekly podcast, vote on the next topics I cover, and get your name in the credits:

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5UAwBUum7CPN5buc-_N1Fw/join Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/thelinuxexperiment

Or, you can donate whatever you want: https://paypal.me/thelinuxexp?locale.x=fr_FR

🏆 FOLLOW ME ELSEWHERE: Twitter : http://twitter.com/thelinuxEXP Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nick_thelinuxexp/ Mastodon: https://mastodon.social/web/@thelinuxEXP Pixelfed: https://pixelfed.social/TLENick I'm also on ODYSEE: https://odysee.com/$/invite/@TheLinuxExperiment:e And on PEERTUBE: https://tilvids.com/c/thelinuxexperiment_channel/videos

This video is distributed under the Creative Commons Share Alike license.

#android #samsung #googlepixel

00:00 Intro 00:29 Sponsor: Save 10% on your website or domain name with Squarespace 01:49 Hardware: too many bad choices 04:41 Why NOT Samsung Phones? 06:30 Why NOT Google Pixels? 08:14 Software Issues: nothing fits 11:18 Alternative ROMS? 13:35 What to use, then? 15:27 Parting Thoughts 15:55 Sponsor: Get a device that runs Linux perfectly 16:49 Support the channel

My preferences are: relatively small phone, very close to 6 inches, a high refresh rate display, 90hz or more, a capable camera array, preferably with a video portrait mode, and, the hardest one, I don't want a phone sold by a chinese company.

Let's start with the size. Current phones are just way too big. If I can't reach the top left corner with my thumb without shifting my grip, it's too big. Period.

As per the provenance of the phone, Chinese manufacturers are a red flag for me. It's not paranoia, but every chinese company is legally required to hand over all information about their users to the chinese government: https://www.techradar.com/news/dell-wants-to-cut-out-chinese-made-chips

I used Samsung phones for a long while. I started on the Galaxy S8, then I had an S9+, an S10e, then an S21. I ran the default Samsung ROM on some of these, and I find Samsung phones great. I even miss the curved edges screen.

My problem with Samsung is more in terms of reliability. All phones I owned from them had the exact same issue: after about a year, they stop recognizing my SIM card. This happened to EVERY Samsung phone I ever owned, so I'm done with them.

So that leaves Google, the Pixels are highly rated by people who use them.

But first, and it's subjective, I find them horrendous to look at. Plus, they're very unreliable. The first gen had severe performance degradation, the second one had a bad OLED screen that burned in way too quickly, and an easy to break USB C connector. The third pixels were plagued by software issues. The fourth pixels had a bad screen again, and a very insecure face unlock mechanism.

The fifth pixels seemed to have huge manufacturing issues with the screen separating from the main body, and almost right after launch as well.

The 6th one has issues with the fingerprint sensor not working well, the assistant could ghost dial random contacts, there was a screen flicker issue, so basically no quality control on that phone.

And as per the pixel 7, it looks like the camera glass is spontaneously cracking.

I'm sure I could look hard and long enough and find something that I'd enjoy, but Android is just messy. Samsung's brand of Android, called oneUI was pretty good, with a great design flair, easy to use with one hand, with major controls at the bottom of the screen, good gesture navigation, and looks wise, it was pretty good.

BUT it's riddled with ads in a lot of the default applications, and it's a mess of applications you can't remove. It's bloatware central.

If you go with Vanilla Android from Google, then you get something that is way more trimmed down, with only Google apps and services, but the design is horrible, in my opinion.

Which leads us to alternate ROMS. Graphene OS works on Pixels, and as I explained, no way I'm buying one, not with that track record.

Then there's Lineage, or /e/, my favorite one, which goes even further than Lineage in terms of removing Google crap, and has a very nice simple aesthetic that I find super pleasing.

/e/ is what I would use, if I could find a phone I like to use it on. My Galaxy S21 is in a drawer, and I'd love to use that with /e/. But I can't, because they don't support it.

Get 100$ credit for your own Linux and gaming server: https://www.linode.com/linuxexperiment Grab a brand new laptop or desktop running Linux:https://www.tuxedocomputers.com/en#

👏 SUPPORT THE CHANNEL: Get access to a weekly podcast, vote on the next topics I cover, and get your name in the credits:

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5UAwBUum7CPN5buc-_N1Fw/join Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/thelinuxexperiment

Or, you can donate whatever you want: https://paypal.me/thelinuxexp?locale.x=fr_FR

🏆 FOLLOW ME ELSEWHERE: Twitter : http://twitter.com/thelinuxEXP Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nick_thelinuxexp/ Mastodon: https://mastodon.social/web/@thelinuxEXP Pixelfed: https://pixelfed.social/TLENick I'm also on ODYSEE: https://odysee.com/$/invite/@TheLinuxExperiment:e And on PEERTUBE: https://tilvids.com/c/thelinuxexperiment_channel/videos

This video is distributed under the Creative Commons Share Alike license.

#apple #linux

00:00 Intro 00:40 Sponsor: 100$ free credit on your Linux or gaming server 01:40 iCloud Account: email, contacts, calendars 04:27 Notes and Reminders 06:13 Photos and iCloud Drive 07:54 Apple Music 08:48 iMessage 09:41 Managing Devices, AirDrop, storage... 11:55 What's missing 13:23 Sponsor: Get a device that runs Linux perfectly 14:33 Support the channel

To add your icloud email address to any desktop mail client on Linux, enter these parameters:

The server for receiving email is imap.mail.me.com. It uses SSL, and the port is 993. The user is your icloud address, and for the password, you'll need to generate an app specific password.

https://support.apple.com/kb/HT204397

As per sending email, the server is smtp.mail.me.com, SSL is needed, and the port is 587. The address and password are the same that you entered for email reception.

For contacts and calendars, the parameters to enter are the following: As the calendar address, enter https://caldav.icloud.com/ . Your user name is your icloud address, and your password is the app password you generated earlier. Same goes for contacts, except the address to enter is https://contacts.icloud.com/.

You can access Notes and Reminders through the web portal. They only have the basic features. iWork apps, like Numbers, pages and Keynote are also all accessible.

Now for photos, the web interface is serviceable, you get your albums, a list of pictures, you can upload photos manually and have them show up on all your other devices, but you won't be able to edit them from here.

There is no auto upload app that will let you send pictures from your desktop to your icloud photo library either, you'll have to do manual uploads.

There's a command line utility called icloud photos downloader:

https://github.com/icloud-photos-downloader/icloud_photos_downloader

As per files stored in iCloud drive, this one will also only be accessible through the web interface, you can't mount it as external storage or auto sync files to a Linux desktop, which kinda sucks.

If you use Apple Music, there's a fantastic Linux desktop client, called Cider. You can install it from flathub,or as a snap, a debian package, and an appimage, as well as from the AUR.

There is simply no way to access your imessages on Linux. No web interface, no app, no third party client. it's a closed source program and protocol, and so unless Apple decides to offer a web interface or to open the protocol, you'll have to keep using your smartphone or tablet to answer these.

Connecting devices

What if you want to plug in a device and grab its contents on Linux, though? Well, that's supported. By default, when plugging in your iphone or ipad, it will show up as a camera device, provided you accept that access on the popup that appears on your device. It will show up with a DCIM folder.

It will be mounted as read-only, so you can't transfer files to it.

You can do that using iFuse: https://www.hukot.net/community/en/tutorials/mount-iphone-in-debian-ubuntu-linux

KDE Connect lets you sync stuff between a phone or tablet, and a linux desktop. It should be installed by default on KDE desktops, and on GNOME, you can install the GSConnect extension. Don't forget to reboot your computer afterwards, it never worked right after install for me.

On iOS, you can share the contents of the clipboard, send photos or videos, send regular files, use the device as a slideshow remote, run commands, or use it as a virtual touchpad. You can also send files to your iDevice, and they'll show up in the Files app, in local files, in the KDE Connect folder.

Make sure your Python applications stay relevant for longer: https://bit.ly/3CyfKnL Grab a brand new laptop or desktop running Linux:https://www.tuxedocomputers.com/en#

👏 SUPPORT THE CHANNEL: Get access to a weekly podcast, vote on the next topics I cover, and get your name in the credits:

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5UAwBUum7CPN5buc-_N1Fw/join Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/thelinuxexperiment

Or, you can donate whatever you want: https://paypal.me/thelinuxexp?locale.x=fr_FR

🏆 FOLLOW ME ELSEWHERE: Twitter : http://twitter.com/thelinuxEXP Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nick_thelinuxexp/ Mastodon: https://mastodon.social/web/@thelinuxEXP Pixelfed: https://pixelfed.social/TLENick I'm also on ODYSEE: https://odysee.com/$/invite/@TheLinuxExperiment:e And on PEERTUBE: https://tilvids.com/c/thelinuxexperiment_channel/videos

This video is distributed under the Creative Commons Share Alike license.

#mastodon #fediverse #socialmedia

00:00 Intro 00:39 Sponsor: Extend the life of your Python applications 01:30 The Fediverse: a network of social networks 04:57 ActivityPub: all your social networks can talk to each other 06:44 How Mastodon works 08:33 How PeerTube works 10:19 How PixelFed works 11:39 Parting thoughts 13:02 Sponsor: buy a device that runs Linux perfectly 14:11 Support the channel

Join Mastodon: https://joinmastodon.org/servers Join Peertube: https://joinpeertube.org/ Join PixelFed: https://pixelfed.org/servers

PixelFed App for iOS: https://testflight.apple.com/join/5HpHJD5l PixelFed App for Android: https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.pixeldroid.app/

List of Fediverse services: https://fediverse.party/en/miscellaneous/

Fediverse is a contraction of Federated Universe. It's basically a very large network of servers that form, well, a social network. But contrary to the ones you might be used to, like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and others, the Fediverse is composed of different services.

The more well known are Mastodon, a Twitter-like microblogging service, PeerTube, a youtube-like platform, or PixelFed, an Instagram-like social network, but there are a TON of others.

Each service is also decentralized, which means there is not one big server farm where everything is hosted: each service is split into instances, basically independent servers, with different goals.

ActivityPub is an open standard, that lets all services on the Fediverse talk to each other. How does that work? Well, in practice, it means you can use your Mastodon app to follow a Peertube channel, or someone that posts pictures on PixelFed, or see new articles from a Wordpress website.

And this goes a bit further: for example, if I comment on Mastodon on a post from Peertube, that comment will also appear on Peertube underneath the video.

Let's start with Mastodon. Mastodon is basically Twitter, but open source and decentralized. It lets you post messages with up to 500 characters, it supports images, videos, polls, content warnings, animated avatar pictures, emojis, links, mentions, hashtags, anything you're used to on Twitter. Mastodon has 1.5 million active users, which might seem small compared to Twitter, but it's more than enough to have interesting conversations with a lot of cool people.

To join Mastodon, all you need to do is pick a server, also called an instance. You can pick any server you like, and it will let you interact with everyone else on any other server.

And then, you can use Mastodon on the web, by typing the address of your instance in your browser, for example, for me, it's mastodon.social, or you can use a mobile app.

Now let's talk about PeerTube. It's a Youtube alternative, although it's much, much smaller. Peertube is also decentralized, being split into different servers, that are federated together, so you can follow people from different instances and still have a complete subscription feed. It also supports ActivityPub, which means you could subscribe to my peerTube channel from a mastodon account, and have a post in your timeline every time I publish a video.

And as a creator, it also lets you sync your youtube channel to it, so you can auto-publish all your videos to Peertube in a few clicks, which is also a great help.

To watch peertube, just type the address of your instance in your browser's URL, for me it's tilvids.com.

Another cool service on the Fediverse is PixelFed. It's basically Instagram, without all the crap they tacked on lately, like reels, or lives. It's just pictures and videos. It's free software, it also uses the ActivityPub standard, so you can follow PixelFed users on Mastodon, for example, and it's ad-free.

It also lets you add filters, just like Instagram, or crop, resize, adding alt text, and you can use hashtags, locations, or create collections, basically photo albums.

Get 100$ credit for your own Linux and gaming server: https://www.linode.com/linuxexperiment

Get your Linux desktop or laptop here: https://slimbook.es/en/

👏 SUPPORT THE CHANNEL: Get access to an exclusive weekly podcast, vote on the next topics I cover, and get your name in the credits:

YOUTUBE: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5UAwBUum7CPN5buc-_N1Fw/join

Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/thelinuxexperiment

Or, you can donate whatever you want: https://paypal.me/thelinuxexp?locale.x=fr_FR

You can also protect your privacy by using this extension from Startpage, each install helps the channel with a small commission: https://add.startpage.com/en/protection/?campaign=4&source=aff

🏆 FOLLOW ME ELSEWHERE: Linux news in Youtube Shorts format: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtZp0mK9IBrpS2-jNzMZmoA

Join us on our Discord server: https://discord.gg/xK7ukavWmQ

Twitter : http://twitter.com/thelinuxEXP

My Gaming on Linux Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCaw_Lz7oifDb-PZCAcZ07kw

📷 GEAR I USE: Sony Alpha A6600 Mirrorless Camera: https://amzn.to/30zKyn7 Sigma 56mm Fixed Prime Lens: https://amzn.to/3aRvK5l Logitech MX Master 3 Mouse: https://amzn.to/3BVI0Od Bluetooth Space Grey Mac Keyboard: https://amzn.to/3jcJETZ Logitech Brio 4K Webcam: https://amzn.to/3jgeTh9 LG Curved Ultrawide Monitor: https://amzn.to/3pcTVDH Logitech White Speakers: https://amzn.to/3n6wSb0 Xbox Controller: https://amzn.to/3BWmIA3 Amazon Links are affiliate codes and generate small commissions to support the channel

00:00 Intro 00:47 Sponsor: 100$ free credit off your Linux or Gaming server 01:37 The decline of Firefox 05:20 Why that's a problem 08:13 Why is Firefox important? 11:43 How can we solve this? 13:23 Sponsor: Get your Linux laptop or desktop with Slimbook 14:23 Support the channel

There is no denying that Firefox has been progressively losing ground in the web browser race. It's highest peak was at the end of 2009, at almost 32% market share, when Internet Explorer has about 55%, and Chrome was barely edging out the 5% market share.

Fast forward to 11 years later, and Chrome now has 62.7% of the market, where Firefox only has 4.2%. How did that happen? Why did the browser that basically started the work to take IE down, that introduced tabs to the masses, and that made sure web standards were respected, why did THAT browser fall so low?

First, Mozilla completely missed the mobile market. There's also the fact that Google pushed CHROME very aggressively. Firefox also kinda rested on their laurels for a while, while Chrome worked tirelessly on their engine.

Now you might think: that's a free market. People use what's best, and if Firefox gets better, people will flock back. And while that's a possibility, as it stands, it still creates an issue.

The web relies on being open and on evolution. These evolutions, to be beneficial to everyone, need to be decided collectively, by independent organisms, supported by all browsers, and implemented freely.

What I mean is that the browser engine shouldn't control how the web runs, looks, or what it can do. The browser engine is just there to ensure that websites and webapps just run like they should.

The rise of Chrome and chromium based browsers, just like any other monopoly, turns that on its head. Developers, you see, can only implement features, if they know that their users will be able to make use of them. If everyone uses the same engine, and that engine decides to NOT implement a feature, then it's just not going to be used at all, because why make something that no user will ever be able to take advantage of?

This is a problem. Not right now, but it might become one in the future. See, Chromium is open source, as is Blink, the rendering engine used in Chromium and every browser using it. It's open source, but decisions are made by Google. In 2019, 92% of commits to the code base were made by Google employees. So let's not kid ourselves: Google has total control over what goes in and what they don't want to see in Chromium.

You might say, someone would fork chromium or Blink and start their own browser, and that would solve it. Except no one would move to that browser.

What's important isn't Firefox specifically, it's having rendering engine diversity. Having 2 or 3 engines that have almost equal market share is crucial to avoid that situation, because in that case, the one that doesn't implement a new technology doesn't hold back the whole web.

So how can we solve this? How can we make sure that Chromium doesn't start deciding how the web should run? Well, as users, apart from not using chromium based browsers, and supporting other engines financially, there isn't much we can do.

The other option would be to try and take governance of Chromium away from Google, but I don't see that happening any time soon.

As I keep exploring alternatives to Google services, I'm now looking into which email services can replace the almighty Gmail. I won't be looking at other big companies services, such as Outlook.com, since they have the same weird practices as Google. Let's look at our options !

Consider supporting the channel on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/thelinuxexperiment

Why quitting gmail Gmail is a great service. It's free, it has plenty of storage, uses labels, allows to archive messages, and generally looks pretty good. It's also using all your data and reading all your emails. That's the main problem, for me.

Proton Mail It's a solution designed to be as private as possible, where everything is encrypted, and no information is shared. Your email account can be created without giving any personal info, and it is of course open source as well. Proton Mail has a free tier, limited to 500Mb of storage and 150 emails per day, which is more than enough for my needs. More demanding users can part with about 4 euros a month, upping the storage to 5gb and 1000 emails per day. This tier also allows you to use your own email domain, and create up to 5 email addresses.

Interface-wise, Proton Mail looks alright. It doesn't have the clean, nice look of Gmail or Outlook.com, and the colors are not really to my tastes, but if you feel like it, you can use custom CSS to style it the way you like.

Proton mail can import your contacts, but unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be any sync options with third party clients. The whole thing being encrypted makes regular email clients unable to read or access anything. There is an application, called Proton Bridge, that allows you to sync your email on a client, but it only works on Thunderbird, and is still in beta.

Net - Courier Net C, or Net courrier, is a european mail provider. They not only provide an email service, but also some storage space (500Mo by default), an adress book, calendar, and photo storage service. Creating an account is free, and lets you pick the domain name between a bunch of different propositions.

The TLDR is that free accounts are subjected to ads through third party cookies, including targeted ads, and premium accounts are not. Net-C won't read your emails, though, to offer ads specifically taileord to what you wrote or received.

Looks-wise, Net-C isn't that great, with a huge header, and boxy design, but it's clear enough, and can be customized, with different colors and sizes. If you don't like the webmail, though, you can sync email with any IMAP capable client, as well as the calendar with caldav and ICS, and the address book with carddav. Net-C also supports Exchange Active Sync if you're into that sort of thing.

Even the storage space can be accessed remotely through FTP or WebDav ! This is great, since it means that your Net-C email, contacts, and calendar can be synced with any client you'd like to use, thus escaping the ads present in the webmail.

Net-C offers a Premium package, for 12 euros a year. This includes 20 Go of email storage, 5 Go of cloud storage, the removal of ads, as well as the access to the POP3 protocol for mail syncing.

If you want more cloud storage, you can buy a "cloud pack", but prices are pretty high, with 500Go costing 40€ per month, so I'd recommend finding another solution.

Zoho Mail Zoho is a big company, providing services ranging from email, to a full blown CRM, to online document editing, project management, and many, many more. Zoho Mail is a full featured solution, integrating a mailbox, contacts, a calendar, tasks, and notes. Zoho guarantees privacy, and does not use or collect your data outside of what it needs to actually provide you the email account. Interface-wise, Zoho looks more modern than the other services I tried before.

The free personal account includes your "@zoho.com" email adress, as well as no ads, two factor authentication, imap and Pop sync for email, and caldav sync for calendar. Zoho is a highly configurable service, with a ton of preferences.

Free tier users get 5GB of mail storage, but you can upgrade, with prices ranging from 3$ a month for 30gb, to 6$ a month for 100Gb. Both these tiers include access to a ton more Zoho services, and the prices are pretty reasonable even for an individual user

Conclusion There are other email providers out there, but these are the ones that stuck with me. For more privacy-focused users, Proton Mail seems like the obvious choice. It has its limits, such a syncing with other clients, but this is the price to pay for full email encryption.

I now hesitate between Zoho and Net-C. On the one hand, Zoho seems like a full featured replacement for a lot of other google services, such as Drive, Docs, Keep, and many more. On the other hand, Net-C seems like a great independant solution, and is more in keeping with the "one provider per service" approach I'm looking for.

Follow me on Twitter : http://twitter.com/thelinuxEXP

After we reviewed a few services that allow you to switch from Google's, it's time to move on to something a bit more complex, but more secure as well: hosting your own services ! To do so, there is something fantastic, that can replicate most of what Google offers: NextCloud. It's not only a file storage solution, but it can also handle email, photos, music, calendar, an online office suite, and a lot more, since it has a giant gallery of apps that you can add to your own instance !

Set up your own Linux server with LINODE : http://www.linode.com/linuxexperiment (USE OFFER CODE LINUXEXP19)

Support the channel on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/thelinuxexperiment

Follow me on Twitter : http://twitter.com/thelinuxEXP

Commands:

Create a user: adduser "YOUR USERNAME"

Give it the sudo permissions: usermod -aG sudo "YOUR USERNAME"

Log out of the root user: logout

Install Nextcloud: sudo snap install nextcloud

Setting up the server There are plenty of ways you can go about doing that. You could use an older computer, a rasperry Pie, or any machine at your house, and turn it into a server by installing the server version of your distro of choice. If you don't want to mess with that or you don't want to configure too many things, you can also turn yourself to cloud-hosted server providers, which is exactly what I'll do. There are plenty around, some geared towards having more storage space, some providing powerful GPUs for distributed calculations, and some oriented towards CPU power. Here, I'll be createing an entry-level server with Linode. I bet you didn't see that one coming !

Most providers will allow you to pick between pre-selected distro to install, or will let you choose a custom one to put on the server. For servers, debian-based distros are often the most robust, as are everything based on Red Hat. But here, Ubuntu has a distinct advantage over most other available options: you can install nextcloud with just one command line, thanks to snap. I know some of you aren't fans of this technology, but it's honestly the easiest option here. I'll be going with Ubuntu 18.04 LTS, which should be stable and perform perfectly well.

Here, I'll pick a small Linode, called a Nanode, since I don't plan on using my server for file storage, but if you're planning on replacing Google Photos or Google Drive with Nextcloud, you should get something with a bigger hard drive. Most providers also allow you to add storage to your existing server afterwards, so no worries.

Creating a user Once your server is created, and your distro has booted, you can access its console to install whatever you need. That's where we'll be installing Nextcloud through snap. To begin, we'll need to create a user that is not the superuser, called Root, so we'll login as root to do that. Enter "root" as the login, and the root password you selected when you created your server. If you installed Ubuntu on your own server, you probably already created a user during the distro's installation, so skip that step !

We'll just type "adduser", followed by a space, and the name of the user we want to create. We'll have to answer a few questions such as the user's full name and its password. The rest is not important here. Our user does not have the rights to run super user commands, which we'll need to install anything, so we'll start by adding our new user to the sudoers group.

Let's type usermod -aG sudo. followed by a space then the name of the user.

And we're done ! Now, we just type logout, to quit being root, and login as our new user, just by typing its username and password.

Installing Nextcloud and logging in Using SNAP, it's only one command line: sudo snap install nextcloud

Once the command has completed its task, we'll need to access our nextcloud instance. Simply get the IP address of your server. To do so, either look in your server manager, if you're using a cloud provider, or type: ifconfig

Your server's IP address is the first series of numbers in the first line.

Copy and paste that in a browser's window to access your nextcloud instance. You'll be asked to create an admin account, so just the username and password you'll want to use to manage your nextcloud instance, and you're in !

Now, this method is pretty easy, but is has one drawback: it will install using its own HTTP and mysql server, so if you want to use the same machine for something else on top of nextcloud, you'll run two servers at the same time, which is not that efficient, but for our simple purposes here, it's not an issue.

And that's it ! Now you have a nextcloud instance up and running. You can explore its various settings, the apps you can install on it, all from the gear menu in the top right corner. I highly recommend you register a domain name and install an SSL certificate, so your server uses HTTPS instead of HTTP, it will be a lot more secure.

Switching to Linux can be a scary proposition. The steps you need to take, the various obstacles, the risk of wiping your disk, everything leads to questions and doubts. The choice can also be overwhelming. This video series aims to help people willing to switch, take their first steps. We’ll start by listing the steps you need to watch to ensure the transition goes well, and move on to how to choose a distro, actually installing it, and how to get help if something goes wrong.

Set up your own Linux server with LINODE: http://www.linode.com/linuxexperiment

Support the channel on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/thelinuxexperiment

Follow me on Twitter : http://twitter.com/thelinuxEXP

Moving to Linux doesn’t imply any technical or coding knowledge, nowadays, but you still need to take some precautions first. You’re going to be messing with your SSD or your hard drive disk, so some amount of care is required. The obvious first step is to backup your data.

Check your components online Check what your computer has inside before trying out Linux. Most motherboards, processors, hard drives and SSDs will work out of the box, no questions asked. Graphics cards aren’t an issue anymore: for AMD users, the open source drivers are perfect. For Intel users, everything is already supported as well. For Nivida users, you’ll just need to install the proprietary driver to make sure you get the full potential of your card. What you need to look for is your wifi and bluetooth modules. Check the model numbers, and look them up online with the keyword “Linux”, to see if people report errors, or have solutions to make them work.

Choose a distribution For those of you who are not familiar with Linux at all, a distro, or distribution, is basically a “version” of a Linux based OS. What we call Linux is not a single unified operating system as Windows or Mac Os. it’s an ensemble of the Linux kernel, the GNU tools, a display server to allow to have a graphical interface, and a desktop environment and applications. For Beginners, Ubuntu or Fedora will work for stability, and Manjaro will do the job if you want bleeding edge. You can then pick the desktop environment you want to use: GNOME for simplicity, KDE for super high customization, Cinnamon for an intermediate mix, and XFCE if you want something lightweight.

Create a live USB Generally, what you need to do is download the distribution you chose, and put it on a USB key with a dedicated tool. Most distros are provided as an ISO image file, what was used to burn optical disks.To put that image on a USB key, all you need is Etcher, a very simple tool that will let you select the ISO itself, the USB key, and click “go”.

Boot from the USB key This means starting up your computer using the USB key as its hard drive, instead of using your computer’s own SSD or Hard drive disk. It’s generally an easy process, but you might need to get into the BIOS or EFI interface to tell your computer to try booting from a USB key instead of the disk it uses.What you’re looking for is “boot options”, or “boot sequence”. You just need to tell your computer to use the USB key instead of the hard drive, generally by changing the boot order and putting your USB device above your hard drive.Once that’s done, you’ll have to save these settings, often it’s a press of the F10 key. Your computer will reboot, and if the USB key is plugged in, it should start up using it as its hard drive.

Try out the distribution Just test everything you can think of: is the resolution OK, is wifi and bluetooth working, are all your peripherals recognized and working: webcam, microphone, trackpad, mouse, keyboard, audio jack, printer, the various ports… Take some time to really put the distro through its paces, and try everything. You’re running a live session, which means anything you do on here won’t be saved when you next reboot, so go crazy!

Install the distribution Most Linux distros have a graphical, easy to understand installer. The most common cases are: wiping out the whole disk and replacing everything with Linux, or dual booting, Most installers will provide an option to dual boot, if you prefer to keep a Windows or Mac OS X partition, and will let you decide how much space to give to your Linux partition. The installer will ask you to enter a username, and a password. Remember that one carefully, cause it’s the one used to log you in, and to do anything that requires admin rights, like changing some settings, or installing programs.

Reboot At reboot, depending on your distribution of choice, and if you elected to dual boot or not, you might see some kind of ugly screen listing the operating systems installed. It’s called Grub, and allows you to pick what system you want to boot, or boot on older linux kernels to solve eventual problems with an update.