Tana let’s you only create an account if you log in through Google, Apple, Github, Microsoft.

No, thank you.

Exactly. There are differences, but the core functionality is the same.

Thanks for the shout-out. Thank you for your endless stream of inspiration. Keep 'em coming! Those links are so valuable.

Thanks for the shout-out @sag@ani.social

A bit swamped right now, but in my head I’m planning on re-implementing gohug in vuejs and open sourcing the code. The current version was just a weekend hack when I was overjoyed with the change in our thinking that !BuyEuropean@feddit.uk and similar communities are bringing.

Would love to add more functionality like a fully customizable and theme-able speed-dial, search engines, lemmy and mastodon feeds, etc.

Not sure if anybody is interested in a liberated start page though. Will push it forward anyway, for personal use at least. But maybe at glacial pace 😅

Thank you so much for that background info! Will migrate my Gitea instance to Forgejo. Was quite fresh anyway, better do it now than later.

Haha. Still running an Xorg session. It’s a shame there were so many nuisances in Wayland. They seem to get fewer and by now I think it will be OK for most things. Still don’t wanna try as long as Xorg works without issues.

Ohhh… I like that. A very strong contender if I switch.

I like the TOTP scanner that automatically scans the screen for QR codes that was intorduced lately in Bitwarden and just the user interface in general that I very like.

But nothing I would lose much sleep over. Thanks for the recommendation!

Exactly. Used a Pixel 7a to test Graphene. Wanted to for a long time but was hesitant to try on my main phone. Just feel lucky I had the opportunity to get a used phone to test on now. Was well worth it IMO.

Got a used Pixel 7a to play around with. Will be supported by Graphene for a few more years I assume and good enough for everything I do.

My main driver is a Pixel 8. Usually skip a few generations in between, but liked the stock Android experience compared to other manufacturer bloat.

Was thinking about trying Graphene for some time now. The last weeks finally gave me the push to do something about it.

Similar with Qubes OS on laptop, but not sure if I’ll ever dig deep there.

Trying out hardware / software is a passion of mine. Got a Pine phone at some point to play around with different Linux based smartphone OS’es and see what the current state is.

I found that LineageOS can be a life saver for “older” hardware that is still perfectly fine but doesn’t get updates from the OEM anymore. In my experience tablets often get treated very badly in that regard.

Can only speak for myself as I don’t know a single person IRL who uses it.

Was primarily using Chrome the last years. I haven’t had heard about Vivaldi until maybe two or three weeks ago.

THE BAD

Let me start with what I don’t like:

• They have their own implementation of how internal windows / focus works. As a user you notice it that e.g. the little Bitwarden popup stays open even if you click somewhere else. Which can be nice. The downside is that it makes life as a web dev a bit more complicated, as Keyboard shortcuts don’t work exactly as on Chrome - which is just the smoothest (also compared to Firefox)

• The tweaking necessary to achieve the behavior I wanted from it took some initial research and set up time. Happy to say that I managed to get everything right, but it was looking up tweaks in user forums, bug tracker, etc. Not the best experience (e.g. vivaldi:// was not associated by default, had to do that manually, several keyboard shortcuts I rely on, start page focus on address bar, other minor tweaks as examples)

• It sometimes after a long period of usage begins to freeze to the point where I have to restart it sometimes, which can be a nuisance. Don’t really care about it, but want to be honest about that.

• It is impossible to drop a current page by dragging the link deep into the folder structure of the bookmarks toolbar. That works on most other browsers, but here you are limited to the very top level of folders only.

THE GOOD

The good parts why I prefer it over all the other browsers currently:

• They absolutely got the settings menu right. It is structured in a way that just speaks to my brain. It is absolutely clear where you find what.

• Then all the things you CAN configure in the first place. Much is missing in other browser. They could, or can if you heavily tweak random flags and hidden settings, here it’s just in the standard configuration interface.

• Configurability of the toolbars is awesome. I got it exactly right to my liking. On Firefox there are one or two items I was not able to move. Not even with custom userChrome tweaks.

• Their sidebar implementation is just awesome too (for my use case). Has all the features I need and removed all that I don’t.

AFTERTHOUGHT

That said I have to say that during testing of different browser I somewhat achieved almost the same with LibreWolf. Except their sidebar and main configuration interface are inferior IMO. I’ll immediately switch (if or) once manifest v2 gets dropped.

Love the power of userChrome.css in Firefox.

Also discovered the Stylus extension which works in most browsers. I have already created several custom styles for my most frequently visited websites that sync in my cloud storage to all my devices. Mostly tweaks to get dark mode right on some pages that don’t support it yet.

My main point I guess is that actively thinking about what products I use and looking into alternatives made me realize what other great options there are. The spark was all this community. For that I’m grateful.

Uuuuuh. Looks exciting. Thanks for the mention

For now try FreeTube for that YouTube itch. There is just no real alternative for YouTube sadly. NewPipe or Tubular (= NewPipe + Sponsorblock, but updated less frequently) on Android.

Re: phone

If you have any free funds to spare at all I recommend you buy a cheap test device second hand on your local marketplace. I did exactly that as I did not want to compromise my main daily driver to test Graphene OS. Once I was confident enough I made the final switch and gave my test device to someone in my family.

In general: Linux based projects would be great, but are not mainstream yet - miss a lot of everyday apps sadly (Postmarket OS, Ubuntu touch, Mobian, etc). That would be my preferred ecosystem.

Sailfish has it’s roots in Nokia and shows great potential, but not there yet right now.

You want a de-google phone - even though you’ll most likely re-enable Google Play services for the regular app store. The main idea is to avoid Google as much as possible and only re-enable what you absolutely must. It’s about the choice mostly. That’s what I love about Graphene OS - you decide everything. Have never seen an OS that starts out that bare but can support everything you need. Has one of the biggest learning curves though.

I would recommend /e/OS or LineageOS.

All projects I mentioned always feature a list of supported devices on their website. Check what device is available to you to play around that is supported by one of the projects. Anything less than 3 years old should have decent performance.

Edit: Did not even tackle socials in my post. Lemmy, Mastodon, Matrix - all really great services. Love decentralized services.

Today I would use docker all-in-one as well. When I started I had no experience with docker, but with the LAMP stack. So I used the traditional installation from source and keep it updated that way as well.

If you can I would recommend to put it on a dedicated machine to have it available for all your devices in your local network 24/7.

Thanks for the recommendation. Have not yet tried it. Prefer to self-host my password manager.

Personally I think we don’t have to be perfect in this. Migrating from the bigger services to self-hosted instances is a win in my book.

There was this famous quote - originally in the context of waste reduction - that got some traction within this movement too:

"We don’t need a handful of people doing (zero waste) perfectly. We need millions of people doing it imperfectly’

In this context I personally prefer Gitea. Very lightweight and straight forward to self-host.

Haha. I still can relate to that thought.

In general my own experiments and the whole migration lately have taught me the value of backups.

It increases peace of mind a lot if you back up important stuff regularly and try recovery from time to time. Just to validate integrity and to see what the process looks like, what can be improved.

There are so many awesome tools and products that are easy to handle, even if you’re not that deep into tech.

Not (yet) self-hostable if I’m not mistaken. But solid option for everybody that does not want to self-host.

Safety razor with Feather blades at home, disposable BIC or similar with 2 to 3 micro-blade rows when travelling without checking luggage by plane. Try to re-use the disposable ones as much as possible.

Have not tried many different safety razor blade manufacturers. Merkur, Derby are non-US as well I think.

Shaving creams and lotions are a whole other rabbit hole. At peak obsession I loved using Musgo Real from Portugal. Then switched to Proraso from Italy to have shaving cream accessory costs.

There are good European retailers that carry good options (e.g. nassrasur.de, tonsus.com )

There is a “TO NOTE” section in the info graphic. It’s literally in there.

Now off… $fscking myself.

Haha. Replied to the wrong comment earlier: Expect a Hotfix Update pretty soon. Message from the Devs an hour ago:

“UPDATE: We have tested the fix on our end and we will put out a hotfix release ASAP.”

Ideally it would not break, but great effort by the team and I can live with the issues from time to time. Overall a much better experience than the YT website