thelinuxexperiment

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00:00 Intro 00:59 Sponsor: Proton 02:17 Data grabbing 05:07 Why this data matters 07:41 Laws make it worse 11:11 What you can do 14:04 Sponsor: Get a PC made to run Linux 15:07 Support the channel

Playlist on how to De-Google your life: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLqmbcbI8U55EfYUVdZfjrfyJyNHD-Bly8

#Privacy #anonymity #private

Virtually everything online now collects data. And this data doesn't just stay at the company that collected it. This data is a giant repository for governments to use and track or monitor their citizens.

See, in a LOT of countries, governments have the right to ask a company to provide all the data they've collected on their users. Companies have no choice but to comply with these, which is also why using end to end, and zero access encrypted services is crucial.

For example, the US can request any company to give them data on a specific user, they've done so more than any other country in 2020. But other countries do the exact same: Germany, Denmark, South korea, France, virtually ever country does this.

If you want even more scary numbers, in 2022, Meta, the parent company for Facebook, Instagram, or Whatsapp, got 827K requests for data. They complied with 76% of these requests.

https://www.globalsecuritymag.com/Meta-received-over-800k-user-data-requests-from-governments-in-2022.html

There are a lot of legal offensives being planned, or already implemented in various countries, so let's look at a few.

In Russia, recent laws from 2017 banned anonymous use of online messaging apps, and prohibits the use of tools that would circumvent government censorship. This means that while VPNs aren't exactly banned, if they let people access banned websites, then they'll also be banned. This has happened to at least 15 VPNs, including NordVPN, ProtonVPN, and OperaVPN.

https://www.hrw.org/news/2017/08/01/russia-new-legislation-attacks-internet-anonymity

In Australia, in 2021, a law was proposed to force people to attach their real name to their social media posts, apparently to fight online trolls, bullying and harrassment. Users would have had to provide an ID before opening any social media account, which would obviously open the door to surveillance, monitoring, and censorship.

https://ia.acs.org.au/article/2021/govt-wants-to-end-online-anonymity.html

In France, we have the recent SREN law. This thing would give the telecom watchdog powers to block websites, and require tools for age verification. On top of that, the law will give the government capabilities to demand web browsers and DNS providers block certain websites.

https://adguard.com/en/blog/france-web-browser-dns-blocking-law.html

in the UK, the Online Safety Bill of 2022 allows the regulatory agency Ofcom to force websites to collect people's personal data, and they'll be able to scan, restrict and remove content that is considered harmful. The bill also mandates online communication services to be moderated, which basically means end to end encryption can be enabled there anymore.

https://datainnovation.org/2022/05/the-uks-online-safety-bill-undermines-encryption-and-anonymity/

So, what can you do about this? For protecting your data, there are plenty of things you can do. First, stop using privacy invasive operating systems. If you can't move to something like Linux, try at least to disable all the telemetry you can in Windows or macOS, in Android and iOS. You can try using a degoogled, privacy focused Android ROM on your smartphone.

Leaving Chrome for a more private browser is also pretty much mandatory. Same goes for your online services: stop using Google as a search engine, Gmail, or stuff like Outlook, OneDrive, iCloud, and the like. Using a VPN is also a solid option to at least try and blur the lines.

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00:00 Intro 00:36 Sponsor: Extend the life of Debian 10 01:47 Cosmic Updates 03:36 Plasma 6 and GNOME get even better 06:53 Youtube has a 5s delay against adblockers 08:24 Google moves forward with manifest v3 09:46 Linux outperforms Windows 11 11:10 Open Source Nvidia drivers now VUlkan compliant 12:14 Gaming: improved Steam, Wine 8.21, DX12 support 14:27 Sponsor: Get a PC made to run Linux 15:27 Support the channel

#Linux #OpenSource #technews

Cosmic Updates

https://blog.system76.com/post/a-cosmic-thanksgiving-2023

PLasma 6 and GNOME get even better

https://pointieststick.com/2023/11/24/this-week-in-kde-the-plasma-6-feature-freeze-approaches/

https://thisweek.gnome.org/posts/2023/11/twig-123/

Youtube has a 5s delay against adblockers

https://www.404media.co/youtube-says-new-5-second-video-load-delay-is-supposed-to-punish-ad-blockers-not-firefox-users/

https://www.techradar.com/computing/browsers/youtube-may-now-have-annoying-delays-if-you-use-an-ad-blocker-heres-why

Google moves forward with manifest v3

https://www.techradar.com/computing/chrome/chromes-ad-blocking-plan-could-be-a-privacy-disaster-and-a-reason-to-switch-to-firefox

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8KWCLhHrblE&pp=ygULbWFuaWZlc3QgdjM%3D

Linux outperforms Windows 11

https://www.phoronix.com/review/threadripper-7995wx-windows-linux

Open Source Nvidia drivers now VUlkan compliant

https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2023/11/open-source-nvidia-vulkan-driver-nvk-hits-vulkan-10-conformance/

Gaming: improved Steam, Wine 8.21, DX12 support

https://steamcommunity.com/games/593110/announcements/detail/3823053915988527062

https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2023/11/vkd3d-proton-211-released-with-directx-raytracing-enabled-by-default/

https://www.winehq.org/announce/8.21

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#Linux #Systemd #opensource

00:00 Intro 00:42 Sponsor: 10% off your first website 01:36 Init systems and SystemD 03:21 SystemD is bloated? 05:48 Everything depends on it now? 07:01 It's a Red Hat project? 08:44 It restricts choice and modularity? 09:51 It makes Linux less secure? 10:59 Why use systemD? 12:37 Parting thoughts 13:52 Sponsor: Get a PC made to run Linux 14:52 Support the channel

All Linux based systems use an Init system, short for initialization: it's the first process that starts after you boot your OS, and it runs in the background while you're using your computer, to manage system services, and various processes. For many, many Linux distros, SystemD is this init system.

SYstem D is a relatively recent project, at the scale of Linux anyway, it started in 2010, and was spearheaded by Red Hat. Its goal was to replace the existing solutions, like SysV or Upstart, to make things faster and more resilient.

It quickly became the default on Fedora, obviously, then on Arch Linux, Debian, Ubuntu, SUSE, and many, many others.

The famous Bloat argument is one advanced most often. System D, as time went on, encompassed more and more features that were generally handled by individual services, not the init system itself, like device management, login, or network management and creating logs.

This can be perceived as going against the Unix philosophy, where a piece of software is supposed to do just one thing, and to communicate well with other small systems.

What's certain is that most distros that implement it are general purpose distros, that need to provide as many systems as possible, and so they tend to use most of systemD's features and modules.

SystemD also "hides away" certain configurations with its own tools, like systemctl, instead of exposing everything as a config file. Whether these things are important or not, though, depend on the person.

Another criticism levelled at System D is the fact that it has become so pervasive that a lot of other components are created with a hard dependency on it: without SystemD, they can't work at all, or will have a limited featureset. This results in some extra work for distros that don't want to use systemD, as they have to use an alternative implementation of these features.

Another regular criticism of SystemD comes from the fact it's mainly a Red Hat project, or at least was started by Red Hat. The fact remains that while systemD was started at Red Hat, it IS an open source project, and it is receiving contributions from a lot of people that aren't at Red hat.

Another criticism of SystemD is that it's making Linux based systems uniform and that it restricts choice. I'd argue this isn't really true, since there ARE other alternatives, like OpenRC, Dinit, SysVInit and more.

One final problem people identify with SystemD is system security. First, there's the fact that having one single system that powers the init and service management of most distros is a security risk: an attacker can target many, many systems by targeting systemD.

Second, some people would say that since SystemD is huge and does a lot of things, it has a very large attack surface.

But why would you WANT to use it, exactly?

SystemD is a unified project, which means you don't have to learn 20 different programs if you need to interact with something: you learn how systemD works, and you can manage everything.

Compared to other init systems, it's also simpler, as it opens various sockets that services can plug into, and services can start in mostly any order. And finally, systemD is written in C, and isn't the usual compilation of bash scripts, so it tends to be faster and more efficient than many other init systems.

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#Linux #OpenSource #TechNews

00:00 Intro 00:47 Sponsor: Thunderbird 01:40 Microsoft has to open Windows 03:22 FSF calls to the EU for more open source 05:06 AMD is teasing some FOSS work around AI 06:36 Peertube's roadmap looks pretty awesome 08:21 Desktop Environment news 10:47 Kernel 6.7 is full of good stuff 12:39 Gaming: Deck OLED, SteamOS update, Wine on Wayland 15:40 Sponsor: Get a PC made to run Linux 16:36 Outro

Microsoft has to open Windows

https://www.theverge.com/2023/11/16/23963579/microsoft-windows-11-eu-digital-markets-act-feature-changes

FSF calls to the EU for more open source

https://fsfe.org/activities/upcyclingandroid/openletter.en.html

AMD is teasing some FOSS work around AI

https://www.phoronix.com/news/AMD-Advancing-AI-Open

Peertube's roadmap looks pretty awesome

https://framablog.org/2023/11/14/lets-regain-ground-on-the-toxic-web-framasofts-2023-report/

Desktop environment news

https://pointieststick.com/2023/11/17/this-week-in-kde-panel-intellihide-and-wayland-presentation-time/

https://thisweek.gnome.org/posts/2023/11/twig-122/

Kernel 6.7 is full of good stuff

https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2023/11/linux-6-6-kernel-confirms-long-term-support

https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linux-6.7-rc1

https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linux-6.7-USB-Thunderbolt

https://www.phoronix.com/review/bcachefs-linux-67

Gaming: Deck OLED, SteamOS update, Wine on Wayland

https://9to5linux.com/steam-deck-oled-is-now-available-to-order-with-hdr-display-and-bigger-battery

https://www.phoronix.com/news/SteamOS-3.5.5

https://www.phoronix.com/news/Wine-Wayland-HiDPI-Merged

https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2023/11/wine-820-brings-directmusic-improvements-and-preparations-for-wine-90/

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#Linux #Flatpak #Snap #AppImage

00:00 Intro 00:47 Sponsor: Proton VPN 02:17 Quick summary of formats 05:52 Performance benchmarks 08:52 Sandboxing 11:41 Missing Features 15:24 Parting Thoughts 16:59 Sponsor: Get a PC made to run Linux 18:00 Support the channel

So, what we call "packages" are debs, for Debian and Ubuntu based distros, and RPMs for Red Hat and SUSE based distros. These packages can contain libraries, or apps, and all libraries are shared between applications.

We then have Flatpaks, which are distro-agnostic. Flatpaks are sandboxed, and while they share a lot of libraries through runtimes, they can use more space over time.

Snaps are basically the same concept as flatpaks, made by Ubuntu. There are a few technical differences with flatpaks, the big one being that Snaps are suitable for graphical apps, and for command line programs.

AppImages are a more portable format: the whole app is shipped inside a single file, with most, if not all of its libraries. This means you can copy/paste apps from a system to another, and they run on any distro that has access to FUSE2.

Now, let's look at some performance comparison between different packaging formats. I ran all these tests on the same Ubuntu 23.04 VM, with 16 gigs of RAM, 4 cores of my 13th gen i7 13700h.

Judging from the results, we can see that all packaging formats take longer to start than basic deb packages. It's especially visible with heavy apps that need to do some setup when they first open, like LibreOffice or GIMP. But we also notice that on subsequent openings of an app, all packaging formats are pretty close.

I ran the Speedometer test in all 4 versions of Firefox: the snap performs worse for jetstream, but much better for Speedometer, while flatpak performs on par for SPeedometer, but worse for jetstream. Deb packages perform well for jetstream, but worse for speedometer., and the Appimage is generally just a good performer.

A sandboxed application runs in its own environment, with very few ways to access things outside of that sandbox. This is similar to how web browsers run each tab in a separate process.

Regular packages aren't sandboxed by default: basically it means that you should only install these packages from sources you trust: either your distro's repos, or well vetted third party repos.

As per Flatpaks, they're all sandboxed. The sandbox isn't 100% bulletproof, nothing is, but it does limit what the app can access. This is all managed through app permissions, much like what you'd find in Android or iOS apps.

Snaps can be sandboxed, but the sandbox isn't mandatory: developers can decide to not use it, although this triggers a manual review of the snap app when it's uploaded to the Snap Store, to check if it does anything weird. As per AppImages, they don't have a sandbox natively.

Now let's see what's missing in terms of features. Regular packages can access everything, so there are no missing features there.

Flatpaks and snaps have more restrictions. The main missing piece is native messaging support: this is what lets an app communicate with another, and one main use case is for password managers: currently, no web browser packaged as flatpak or snap can interact with a third party password manager reliably.

Support for the system theme is also not perfect for snaps and flatpaks, or for AppImages.

As per various problems with these packaging formats, you also have the size of packages: while Snaps and Flatpaks do share libraries between apps, they don't share as much as regular packages, which means they can take up more space.

Snaps also have the added problem that they mount each app in its own virtual filesystem, that is decompressed on the fly: this can clutter your mount points, which can be annoying if you need to manage these regularly. The Snap Store backend is also proprietary, and it's centralized.

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#Linux #office #work

00:00 Intro 00:27 Sponsor: 10% off your first website with SquareSpace 01:25 Linux is everywhere 02:47 Developers 04:00 Office Work 06:57 Media Creation 08:15 AI 08:58 The tip of the iceberg 11:19 Not for everyone 13:40 Sponsor: Get a PC made to run Linux 14:41 Support the channel

The first thing is that Linux is everywhere and already used by professionals all around the world.

I could take the example of Android, which is the most popular smartphone OS in the world, and using a Linux kernel. I could turn to the absolute domination of Linux on the server space.

I could also point to every NAS out there, generally using a Linux kernel, if we look at IoT and small appliances, Linux also dominates the space. But it's not what people intend when talking about an OS. Generally, they mean that the Linux DESKTOP isn't ready for professionals.

The first obvious counter argument is developers. Linux is used by 47% of professional developers. That's higher than the market share of macOS among developers.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_C3pgc1Iho

If we take the vast majority of people who will interact with a computer, what do they truly need in their day to day job? A web browser, an email client, an office suite, and a usable interface.

On that specific front, Linux has all that's needed. Whether it's KDE for an interface closer to Windows, or GNOME for the simplest thing to use possible, the Linux desktop IS one of the most usable out there.

In terms of web browsers, there's no question, we have them all. For email clients, we do lack Outlook, but the web interface might be enough for most people's needs, and if not, we have awesome clients that can replace Outlook: Evolution and Thunderbird.

LibreOffice might be a great option for a lot of people, but it does have some problems, let's face it. But LibreOffice isn't our only choice. For perfect compatibility, we have access to SoftMaker Office, now called FreeOffice, or to WPS Office.

Now, for media creation, Linux lacks all the Adobe programs. But that doesn't mean we don't have tools either. Davinci Resolve is a tool used by professionals and hollywood studios to edit videos, edit audio, and create virtual effects. It basically does what Audition, After Effects and Premiere do, in one single package. it's available on Linux.

We have Blender for VFX. Houdini, a tool used by VFX artists for simulations? It's on Linux. Maya? It's on Linux. Studio One, a professional DIgital Audio Workstation, just released a beta for Linux. We have inkscape, Ardour, Krita - one of the most popular digital drawing apps- OBS, PDF Studio for editing PDF documents, Bitwig, and a lot more.

Whether you like AI or not, it's happening. And AI is a professional domain in which Linux is the standard.

And that's the tip of the iceberg. Cybersecurity professionals mostly use Linux. Almost 100% of supercomputers used for any specific domain run Linux. The whole space industry runs on Linux. A bunch of military sytems run Linux.

The market share of Linux on the desktop is low, there's no denying that: it's listed at barely 3%, far below macOS or Windows. But this doesn't include another system: Chrome OS. And chrome OS has 3.9% market share on the desktop. Combined with non Chrome OS Linux ssytems, taht's almost 7%. it's still lower than proprietary OSes, but that's a LOT of computers running a Linux system.

Now, that doesn't mean Linux is ready for every professional out there. If you absolutely need certain software that's not available, then Linux won't work for you. But I'd argue that it's not necessarily a Linux problem: it has the tools needed to do the same job in most cases. It's just not the tools you're allowed to use, or want to use.

Learn more about the risks of running an End Of Life distro here: https://tuxcare.com/downloadables/the-dangers-of-running-end-of-life-linux/?utm_campaign=The%20Linux%20Experiment&utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=paidsocial&utm_term=end-of-life-danger

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#Linux #OpenSource #TechNews

00:00 Intro 00:46 Sponsor: Learn more about the risks of EOL distros 01:58 Ubuntu 23.10 broke graphical deb installs 04:00 New GNOME Director seems controversial 06:11 OpenSUSE working on a replacement to Yast installer 07:57 COSMIC and GNOME updates 09:51 Drivers and performance improvements 12:29 Gaming News: HDR, low latency & Lutris 15:12 Sponsor: Get a PC made to run Linux 16:19 Support the channel

Ubuntu 23.10 broke graphical deb installs

https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2023/10/install-deb-ubuntu-23-10-no-app-error

New GNOME Director seems controversial

https://linuxiac.com/gnome-projects-unexpected-ceo-choice/

OpenSUSE working on a replacement to Yast installer

https://linuxiac.com/opensuse-agama-installer/

https://lists.opensuse.org/archives/list/[email protected]/thread/PH7R3Q36KUBBBV4COQ5ZLDCTJNODHC6N/

COSMIC and GNOME updates

https://blog.system76.com/post/locked-and-loaded-with-new-cosmic-de-updates

https://thisweek.gnome.org/posts/2023/10/twig-118/

Drivers and performance improvements

https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linux-DRM-GPUVM-Relicensed

https://www.phoronix.com/news/NVK-Vulkan-XDC-2023

https://www.phoronix.com/news/RADV-Ray-Tracing-2023

Gaming News: HDR, low latency & Nvidia wayland

https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2023/10/nvidia-looking-to-hook-up-reflex-support-in-proton/

https://www.phoronix.com/news/XDC-2023-AMD-Colors-HDR

https://github.com/lutris/lutris/releases/tag/v0.5.14

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#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/

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#Ubuntu #Linux #linuxdistro

00:00 Intro 00:31 Enhanced Tiling 02:32 New App Store 05:11 Firmware Tool 05:50 Install Changes 07:24 GNOME 45 Features 09:31 Under the hood 11:05 Official Flavours 14:16 Sponsor: Get a PC made to run Linux 15:29 Support the channel

All GNOME 45 features: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RQSA0nZaF6M

You'll get the whole new tiling assistant extension added, right out of the box. It expands on the edge tiling that GNOME already brings, by letting you do quarter tiling, so you have more flexibility in how you organize your workspace. You also can scale a window to use half of your screen's height, by dragging it to the bottom edge, or to the top edge.

Ubuntu 23.10 also comes with a brand new Ubuntu App Store, called the App Center. It's a really well designed application, and it won't stop you from installing apps from the Ubuntu repos, since debian packages are supported after all.

Ubuntu 23.10 also comes with a new firmware updater application. It uses the linux vendor firmware service as a backend, or course, so it's basically just a GUI for the FWUPD daemon.

The installer now defaults to a new install, with just the essentials. If you want the full complement of apps Ubuntu usually ships, then you'll have to select the "full install" option instead.

There's also a new experimental full disk encryption option that uses the TPM chip in your computer, if it has one.

And, of course, Ubuntu 23.10 ships with GNOME 45. First, the Activities button has been replaced with a workspaces indicator. Background apps have been improved in the quick settings, with the ability to click them to open a window, and a little indicator when closing an app. Still in the quick settings, you'll get a keyboard backlight toggle, that lets you turn that feature on or off, or select the brightness level you prefer. And, in the panel, you'll get a camera indicator when an app is accessing your webcam.

In terms of apps, there's a new split headerbar design for apps like Nautilus and the settings, and Nautilus gained improved search.

In the settings, you'll get a new system dialog, with more information about your computer, and an easy clickable button to copy all that information. There's also a new Privacy page, better designed, and a few otehr pages have been touched up, like with virtually every release of every desktop environment.

Finally, the compositor, Mutter, gained support for YUV color space, so it should handle certain movies and shows much better, and it now has a separate thread to handle the mouse pointer under wayland, which will result in a lot less lag and input delay, so that's a big improvement.

Under the hood, 23.10 ships whit the Linux kernel 6.5, so you should get the latest hardware support, and a bunch of performance improvements. Mantic Minotaur will be supported for 9 months, as it's not an LTS release, so it's only suitable if you don't mind running big upgrades regularly.

The flavour with the most changes is Ubuntu budgie, which updates to Budgie 10.8. THis has a new trash applet, the new Magpie compositor to better support X11 while Budgie plans its transition to being Wayland only, a new dialog to get super user permissions, support for performance modes in the power applet, plus some theme refinements with a green accent color by default, and a lot of smaller changes to the control center, the applets, support for Raspberry Pi, more themes being bundled out of the box, and more.

Ubuntu Cinnamon moves to Cinnamon 5.8.4, which will give you touchpad and touchscreen gestures, with a lot of configuration options, the new global dark mode setting, better support for desktop portals and flatpak apps. You get the new styles feature.

Other flavours are stuck on the same version of heir respective DEs and don't bring many changes apart from the internals.

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Murena 2 campaign (not sponsored, no affiliate commission): https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/murena/murena-2-switch-your-privacy-on

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#privacy #google #android

00:00 Intro 01:08 The Phone: Murena 2 02:36 Specifications 05:17 eOS on the Murena 2 10:46 Price and availability 13:03 Sponsor: Get a PC made to run Linux 14:08 Support the channel

This isn't the completely finalized design, so the back of the phone, and the protection that came in the box aren't completely final and might change a little.

The very point of the Murena 2 is to offer a privacy focused phone: it comes with /e/ OS, and it has a privacy switch to disconnect the cameras and microphone, and another switch to completely shut off any connectivity the phone has. The first switch, for the camera and mic is a physical one: it completely shuts off the connection to the camera and the mic.

The connectivity switch is purely software, and will just turn on airplane mode and will mute your phone, so it's more a "big do not disturb" mode than a privacy switch.

It comes with a mediatek CPU, with 4 performance cores at 2.1Ghz and 4 efficiency cores at 2 Ghz, it has 8 gigs of RAM, 128 gigs of storage, plus a micro SD slot. It supports dual SIM, and the OLED screen is 6.43 inches and a resolution of 1080x2400, plus a hole punch cut out for the selfie camera, which is 25 megapixels.

On the back, you get 3 camera lenses, one is the standard lens, at 64 megapixels, one is an ultrawide, at 13 MP and one is a telephoto lens at 5 Megapixels.

It has a 4000 milliamp hour battery, with support for high speed charging at 18W, it supports Wifi ac and bluetooth 4.2, and it's 4G, not 5G.

They also say they have a 6 out of 10 on repairability, and they'll offer spare parts and schematics for easy repair. They'll provide 5 years of support for the software at least.

On the Murena 2, /e/ OS runs OK. It's not perfectly smooth, animations can sometimes jitter a bit, but generally, the experience is what you'd expect from a mid range Android smartphone: it's not high refresh rate, buttery smoothness, but it's definitely not annoying. In some apps, you'll definitely notice stutters, like in the App Lounge when scrolling, but navigating the phone is good enough, and video playback and games run well.

Haptics don't seem to be perfectly configured yet, as typing on the keyboard provides a very tiny sort of clicky rattle instead of a nice vibration, and going back using gestures also doesn't feel super tactile, but that's probably because it's a pre production model.

The 2 privacy switches work perfectly, with the one on the right toggling airplane mode and do not disturb, and the one on the left shutting down the camera and the mic, both have a little LED as well to indicate that these switches are on, although handling of that could be improved, as launching the camera app with the privacy toggle on, will spit out an error, instead of a smoother message indicating your privacy toggle is on.

Testing the phone further, the screen is really nice and bright, with very vivid colors, it feels pretty damn nice to use, but that's probably because it's OLED.

The cameras are pretty basic, the telephoto had a very hard time focusing on anything for me, but the other 2 worked fine, although you won't find the same kind of post processing you'll get on most Android phones, so your pictures might not look as sharp or well balanced as on, say, a Pixel or even a Samsung A series phone. The front facing camera, though, is pretty solid, and produces nice pictures all things considered.

The speakers are decent enough for a phone, they won't blow you away or anything, but they get pretty loud without distorting too much or at all. They are bottom firing, there's no "stereo" speaker using the earpiece of the phone. The microphone isn't great though, your vocal messages and phone calls won't sound extremely crisp.

With the kickstarter, the phone is 399€, without it, it will be 499€.

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#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/

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#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.