It really depends on what you’re looking for. I’m happy with Lineage, but others go for stricter privacy setups like Graphene. As long as you can avoid G Apps, IMHO you’re fine. But that’s still Android in some form.

The whole Linux phone experiment is a lovely idea that (if I understand correctly) is hampered by the tons of different mobile phone makes and models. Canonical dropped Ubuntu Touch like a hot potato, and it only survived as a community project.

For your last question, there’s the Lemmy terminal viewer — I think it’s unmaintained, but it’s a start?

Here’s an idea: not buying “smart devices” that turn into fancy paperweights the second they aren’t connected to a WiFi network.

• A scale doesn’t need to connect to a server.
• The lights in your house don’t need to be connected to a server.
• Your fridge, etc.

If they do, that’s for something completely different than what you bought them to do. And if there’s no FOSS app to control those extraneous features, it’s a black box.

Ah, tech journos…

Ubuntu Touch [is] a great choice if you seek an alternative that prioritizes privacy and open-source ideals.

But

One area that has improved is Google account synchronization. While it’s not flawless, it’s easier to sync services like Gmail and Calendar than it was before.

🤦 I don’t think he fully grasps that Google is the main reason to use a more private OS than (stock) Android.

Nope. He explicitly only praises battery life in that parapgraph. He experienced some performance issues in his (old) test device:

Ubuntu Touch shines in battery life (at least in my experience). Since the OS is lighter and uses fewer system resources, many users report better battery performance than on Android. Ubuntu Touch is optimized to reduce unnecessary background processes, making your phone last longer on a single charge. However, if you push the OS with more demanding tasks, you may still run into performance issues, especially on older hardware.

Oh! Thanks for reminding me! 😆🎂

Same. Didn’t know about labwc, will look imto it when I switch to Wayland someday!

Did you come off a Crunchbang distro as well? 🙂

None. Openbox WM with Tint2 as a rudimentary system bar, Rofi as launcher.

Cool cool, glad to see I may have jumped the gun. But I had cause to try a couple other Firefoxes (Nightly Beta and Mull) in the meantime!

Now I’ll just be refreshing F-Droid every five minutes until the update comes through 😄

Didn’t even know there was a Waterfox for android, good to know.

I experience similar, if rarely, with my about:config modifications and muBlock add-on [edit: that was on Fennec, I expect similar on other Fenix forks]. Those things I blame more on the modern web than on any browser :/

Thanks for the context! Much appreciated.

Ah yes, the toolchain changes appear to be a stumbling stone for the Fennec devs as well. That kind of thing doesn’t exactly speed up new releases, I’m sure.

What are your experiences with Mull? Is it generally compatible with Firefox plugins, and are there performance improvements as well as in security?

I think this is beside the point here, but as it says in the F-droid description, their build “has proprietary bits and telemetry removed”.

You really only need the “CD ROM” repo for the base install from physical media; maybe there are edge cases where you’d want to roll back, but on the whole you’re in safe hands with the official, Debian stable repos 🙂

Enjoy the Linux journey! Debian is a great starting point to learn from, IMHO.

Did I mess up by doing that and create a situation like that?

No, this is standard procedure. Your system and software have been updated to the latest, stable version. Unless you actively add a repo containing unstable software versions, there shouldn’t be anything to worry about.

Yeah well, VLC has been open source for 23 years.

What’s that? Can’t hear you over the din of volunteers trying to get all of the Internet Archive back online.

Honestly, when you say

are these distributions doing anything beyond repackaging the latest software?

— I have to wonder what you think is so trivial about keeping your system current with latest bug fixes and security updates?

I don’t need or want a distro to radically reinvent itself with every release. I had enough of that fuckery with Windows, way back when — incidentally, also a direct reason I quit that OS. And seeing “big changes” like Ubuntu deciding to functionally deprecate deb packages is… unappealing to me as well.

There are probably sexier updates going on in DEs, but (insofar as a distro isn’t wedded to one particular desktop environment) I’m fine to let them hog that glamour.

Yeah, that was my thinking — that for most purposes LibreOffice will replace Microsoft Office fairly well. But I’m always keen to hear what bumps people run into when they switch from the latter. For you it seems there haven’t been any worth mentioning?

Glad to hear it’s gone so smoothly!