FWIW I did run on old hardware with ratpoison and had a blazing fast experience, much more responsive than “top” hardware back then. So… yes IMHO it’s about the wm/de usually, the rest follows. Obviously you can’t run super demanding software, e.g. video editing, 3D modeling, etc but that’s usually rather obvious.
Why wouldn’t Debian run?
Debian is the OS, with its package manager and some applications suggested by default. You can install Debian with X, without X, with a certain window manager or another, etc. So… Debian WILL 100% run, the question rather is WHICH software should you pick that gives the best compromise between ease of use (specific to that person) AND performance (specific to that computer).
PS: to be clear, that’s the same for other distributions. There are distributions that specifically target older hardware and that in turn might facilitate the process but usually if you do check how such distributions are done, they are basically Debian (or NixOS or Alpine or whatever) with a specific package selection. It’s rare (if ever? counter-example) to have anything special that would somehow “boost” performance for hardware, especially here when it’s rather common hardware.
Sure, or containers, e.g. Docker/Podman, especially if there is a Web API available.
That being said, whatever you do, in fine it’s about trust. What you are installing can cause damage so IMHO it’s more about keeping things manageable while having your actually important data (not programs, downloaded content, etc but rather things you did yourself, e.g. written documents, sketches, configuration files, prototypes, photos, etc) safe even when the system itself is broken regardless of how and why.
educate your family and friends on the risk of voice cloning so they don’t fall for phone scams.
Absolutely, in fact you can easily (clone your own voice, create a new email address like LGTM_butnotop@discuss.tchncs.de and attach the recording where you ask for a Netflix/Apple/whatever gift card) do it as a harmless prank just to gauge how they’ll react.
You can find my voice at https://video.benetou.fr/ and elsewhere on the Internet because I did talks are conferences.
I’m not particularly worry by it … because I expect people who are important to me (family, friends, even colleagues) to be trained enough (because it’s not about intelligence) to contact me back (as they have my number, email, etc) if anything serious were to happen.
IMHO it’s mostly a problem for basic phishing attack where somebody is rushed to provide information. As soon as the person replies “OK let me call you back” then the whole threat disappears. Well… if the hacker did manage to control your phone number or your email that’s a totally different ballgame though but I assume we’re not talking at this level.
sshd is like the #1 reason I use termux. Sure, one can “survive” with adb shell but… what a pain. Setup termux then sshd then bring on your toolset, from nodejs to whatever else you need. Making your Android device a “real” computer at last!
outdated
how? Maybe I don’t properly understand the difference with obsolete?
Debian… but also to clarify it’s not “old” at all. I’m using Debian on my servers, yes, but also on my desktop that use daily, to work and to play video games on, including VR. So… don’t think because it’s “old” and “stable” it means it’s outdated.
Yeay, Debian user here who also left Twitter/X for similar reasons. I was already on Mastodon and Bluesky but didn’t make a habit out of it. Leaving the bad platform entirely (and having my data archived and searchable) helped a lot.
Glad to hear they moved on!
I don’t but it’s quite mature, people have been using it as a replacement for years now.
any advice or suggestion, please do give
I haven’t build one so I can’t help as much… but I’d be honest from the start by comparing it, head-on, with alternatives (if I understood correctly) e.g. https://github.com/searxng/searxng and simultaneously, because it’s federated, make it interroperable with them.
Also a good moment to clarify that DRM sucks, but as a user, or even a consumer, you don’t have to be worry of them (at least technically) because it’s trivial to remove. For example you can use this super convenient script https://pypi.org/project/DeGourou/ to straight up download content that should in theory be “just” for you. The online public library I use, namely https://www.lirtuel.be/ does offer ePub and PDF so I was overjoy… only to realize they meant with DRM. As I had already registered and was honestly pissed at them for not disclosing it from the start I tried DeGourou and… it just worked and is very convenient (you just give it the .acsm then it downloads and remove the DRM, so you get a proper file after). So… yeah, obviously don’t buy any DRM content if you don’t have to but if somehow you must, it’s not that big a deal technically speaking.
PineNote (Pine 64) or reMarkable (Pro if you have budget, 2 or even 1 otherwise)
Both work on Linux proper, the reMarkable comes with Linux out of the box whereas PineNote comes with Android but one can install Linux on it.
They are mostly to sketch but it is also good to read. You can pretty much use whatever you want on them, including developing your own software. I don’t know if they have Calibre clients because whats I do is… just scp my ePubs or PDFs on there.
Here are my tinkering notes on both https://fabien.benetou.fr/Tools/Eink but feel free to ask any clarification.
PS: the Bookeen Diva also does not require any software, namely you can plug it on Linux, it gets detected as a filesystem and you can copy DRM-free content on it. It’s a totally different form factor (much smaller so IMHO not great for comics) and I don’t think there is the same open-source community as the other 2.
Also note that you can how your own self hosted alternative https://github.com/ddvk/rmfakecloud
I’d argue it’s a simple toggle, namely if you do not register to their cloud, you don’t have access to their features and that’s it. If you somehow “mess” registration up and still went through the steps, hard reset and voila, clean reMarkable.
Source : I had the one and now have the reMarkable 2 and Pro and I do not use their cloud.
I’m confused, are you talking to me or OP? I didn’t ask which kernel anyone “should” use. I asked about which software does rely on a specific feature that you mentioned, namely DRM. Please clarify.
Beside this service (which I’m not using), any other? I briefly looked for a list but couldn’t find one.
It’s a comment on cherrypicking, namely why is it “bad” for DeepSeek but OK for Outlook?
Yeah I don’t think you’re addressing what I wrote, you’re mixing up my suggestion (to clarify the important part is “or”) with DistroBox then more general comments. Might be that I wrote it unclearly but anyway it wasn’t what I was saying.