Not really… At least not generally. The privacy increase from switching from Android to proper Linux is, to me at least, more important than loosing a locked bootloader.

That’s just my threat model. I know that Google & Co are extracting as much info about me as humanly possible, and I have no reason to believe that I am being targeted by someone with the capability to exploit the unlocked bootloader.

Same for my PC btw - secure boot is disabled because it’s not worth the hassle. Again. In my threat model.

(But I would wager that this goes for a lot of users.)

Quick! Get this person a series A, B and C funding!

Pretty sure the Bootloader in unlockable (at least they were in the past?) and support(ed) mainline Linux kernel for an actual Linux mobile OS.

Idk, to me that sounds way better than staying on a google device.

Yeah Librewolf is amazing. I dialed some if the ootb settings back for usability, but all the “new” stuff Mozilla adds is filtered right back out upstream, so I never even see it.

1. Signal
2. XMPP
3. Matrix

In that order. I self-host both XMPP and Matrix, and I wouldn’t want to stop using matrix. Spaces, arbitrary amounts of self-chats, and so on are great. I use matrix every day.

But for chatting… It sooner or later fails you. It’s slow. Notifications break. Messages are shown as sent, but somehow do not appear in the recipient’s devices until TWO WEEKS LATER (yeah IDK, happened twice already, in different chats and directions. Best part is, I’m not even federated!). Encryption is great IF YOU KNOW SOME CRYPTOGRAPHY BASICS, and utterly confusing otherwise.

XMPP just works. Especially the calls, holy shit, I had to fight Matrix for so long to make voice and video calls work, and xmpp just… Works. Notifications are way more reliable (as in, have been absolutely perfect). I really like monocles as a chat app on Android. (The downside is: can’t decrypt old messages on new devices, and desktop clients are ugly.)

So why Signal above XMPP?

Because it’s not your fault should something ever break in a vital service. Also the encryption and privacy afforded by it a great.

I’ll second Pocket-ID.

I originally had Authentik setup. It worked well enough. However, their packaging constantly broke and no-one seemed to care.

Switched to Pocket-ID and won’t be looking back. Passkey-based OAuth was all I wanted anyways. (Also, the logins themselves are noticeably faster!)

Burden of proof is on Astrology claiming to be real.

• AI bad
• Astrology 100% superstitious bullshit

Yeah, like 3-4x/week.

This includes things like train tickets, because I refuse to have to have my phone with me.

Sheet music, shopping list, letters to doctors/government offices/…

But… That would force them to provide a great user experience in order to retain users!! That’s an unacceptable burden on the largest companies in the world!!

Yeah. Honestly. For platforms like Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, mandate chronological feeds of only people you have followed, paginated at like 30.

I feel like one could legitimately run on this platform at this point.

They saved lifes.

Glad to have cleared that up for you 👍

It’s just a helper. It’s a way for your calendar to ask “uhhh… Should I already know of any calendars…?” and the service going “oh actually yeah, the user configured their email account, hold on, here’s the corresponding calendar”.

That’s just basic functionality. Maybe what’s tripping you up is that it’s a separate service? Because I assume you have nothing against inputting your email into a mail client and a calendar separately.

If so, then for one, it’s not really a difference if the mail app stores this into or the service does; and second, it’s a good thing to have this standardized into a single purpose built service, rather than having each app reimplement this stuff.

CPU and RAM usage is so negligible it’s laughable.

IDK.

It seems like you read something about personal data in the service description and just jumped to the conclusion that this is something nefarious.

How exactly is it bloatware though? Not a KDE user myself, just had a look at the wiki. Seems it’s just a convenience utility to allow you to not have to enter the same things into multiple applications?

This is VERY different from pre-installed apps in your start menu that collect and sell info about you…

Yeah, thinking more about it, I don’t think the term “bloatware” (as it is commonly used) applies here at all.

How do I completely disable it forever?

To answer your question: sudo systemctl mask <servicename>.service

The much more common disable just disables autostart; masking will point the service file at /dev/null, which makes it impossible to load or start the service, even when other services or apps (like the clock widget someone mentioned in the comments) request it.

This started off as a single file in my private nix config, to see if I could get it working at all. In that initial part, some parts were indeed LLM generated (esp. testcases based on my existing intents and failures).

When I noticed that this might actually work and be useful not just for myself though, I moved everything out manually, refactored and cleaned it up, and everything since has just been myself. I guess you’re still right though. I’ll see about adding a disclaimer to the README until I’ve gotten the chance to properly rewrite everything.

Huh, interesting. Does that work with wildcards like “put x on my shopping list”? Also, what are you using for that, if I may ask?

Sorry, I don’t quite follow 😅

What’s the problematic response?

Yay, that’s fantastic to hear!

Also, how’s your experience been with the PE? Getting a readymade device in a nice shell is appealing for sure 😅

Oh, in the demo gif, that’s via a shortcut (holding power for half a second). Sorry, can’t help with wakeword there 😅