FOSS Is Fun

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My whole infrastructure is designed so that my homeserver is expendable.

Therefore my most important tool is Syncthing. It is decentral, which is awesome for uptime and reducing dependance on a single point of failure. My server is configured as the “introducer” node for convenience.

I try to find file-based applications, such as KeePassXC or Obsidian, whenever I can so that I can sync as much as possible with Syncthing.

Therefore there is (luckily) not much left to host and all of it is less critical:

• Nextcloud AIO: calendar, contacts, RSS, Syncthing files via external storage
• Webserver: Firefox search plugins (Why is this necessary, Mozilla?!), custom uBlock Origin filter list, personal website

So the worst thing that can happen when my server fails is: I need to import my OPML to a cloud provider and I loose syncing for some less important stuff and my homepage is not accessible.

Since I just rebuilt my server, I can confirm that I managed a whole week without it just fine. Thank you very much, Syncthing!

I was in a similar situation not too long ago.

My criteria for another scripting language included that it should be preinstalled on all target systems (i. e. Debian and Fedora), it should be an interpreted language and it needs to have type safety.

Afterall I settled with Python due to its popularity, its syntax and features (type safety since v3.6, etc.) and the fact that it is preinstalled on many Linux distributions. System components often use Python as well, which means that libraries to interact with the system tend to be included by default.

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My main reason is email notifications. But it also is very convenient for accessing multiple email accounts with different webmail interfaces in one unified interface. One thing Thunderbird does great is email encryption, which unfortunately is rarely used, but I still offer it, via Autocrypt, to anyone who wants to use it.

Actually that’s one of the main reasons I use Syncthing: It doesn’t need a server, as it is a peer-to-peer architecture. Unlike a centralised solution (cloud storage, Nextcloud, etc.) devices sync directly with each other. If they are on the same local network, you get to enjoy the full bandwidth of your local network. If they need to sync over a long distance over the internet, you are limited by the upload and download speeds of your internet provider, just like with centralised storage.

I have a server that serves as an introducer, so I don’t have to connect each device with every other device manually. But the server doesn’t need to be available once all devices are connected with each other.

Syncing continues to work without it for as long as I don’t reinstall any of the other devices. And even if I’d reinstall a device, I could delegate any other device to be the introducer or connect the devices manually with each other. It really is quite robust and fail-safe.

Nowadays switching to Windows isn’t really an option for me anymore, as I am just too invested into the Linux ecosystem.

It’s always funny hearing about how difficult it is to switch from Windows to Linux, because you have to relearn how to use a computer and all your favourite software isn’t available.

But for me it’s the same, but the other way around! I would have to relearn how to document my installation (scripts, etc.), what program to use for which task or how to force a game onto a certain monitor (the last time I looked into this, the only way on Windows was switching the primary monitor before starting said game; on Linux I can just tell KWin how to make the program behave).

It would be a lot of work with little or no benefit to me and I’m not even sure if all my hardware is compatible with Windows, as I did all my software and hardware purchases in the last decade with only Linux in mind and I usually didn’t purchase something if the manufacturer offered no support for Linux (money talks).

When I was still new to Linux I also had these phases from time to time where I went back to Windows, used mainstream software, like Microsoft Office, etc… I was still undecided if Linux was really worth all the hassle and I wasn’t quite settled on either side.

But I always returned to Linux for whatever reason. Probably because using Windows just didn’t feel right … The times where I returned to Windows got rarer and shorter the older I got. The last time I used Windows for an extensive amount of time was during the Windows 10 beta period. I even had a Windows Phone for a year! I returned to Linux roughly once Windows 10 was released as stable (funnily enough).

I believe that you are likely in a very similar situation at the moment as I was. I think you might just need some time to settle with something and get comfortable. ;)

Haha, that’s what I was thinking as well when I first discovered it. Glad you found it through my post!

I took my handwritten notes with PDF Annotator in a Windows VM for over three years …

For me the issue is “importing and exporting”. I just don’t want to have a note-taking software anymore where I can’t just read or edit plain text files with any text editor I happen to have.

I know I can export my notes from Joplin into markdown, but when I last tried it, I wasn’t satisfied with the result. I don’t remember it anymore, but exporting either didn’t preserve the file hierarchy, caused issues with linked images or I had to do something else with the markdown files.

I also didn’t like that Joplin had to sync with a local folder instead of just using the files directly. Overall it was just too complex for what I need (i. e. a glorified text editor).

But I don’t want to discourage anyone from using Joplin. Different people simply have different needs and Joplin is free to use so one should try it out and see for themselves. ;)

For text-based notes I use Obsidian.

It isn’t open source, but it writes standard markdown files to disk, so I can switch programs whenever I like and I am not locked into the Obsidian ecosystem with my notes. That was the main reason why I decided against using Joplin, especially after my experience with converting recipes from Nextcloud Cookbook to markdown …

In general I am always trying to find a simple file-based solution for whatever I need to do. I want to be able to sync it with Syncthing instead of something fancier that requires a centralised web server or even relies on a cloud service.

I am surprised that no one has mentioned Rnote yet.

It is my favourite newly-created program for Linux. It is a relatively new app which supports annotating files and taking handwritten notes. You can import PDFs, set the page size to infinite or a fixed size (something OneNote can’t do), adjust the background to display grids or lines or dots or nothing with any spacing you like, input text with your keyboard, … It is available on Flathub for easy installation.

The only major downside is the following: Disclaimer: The file format is still unstable. It might change and break compatibility between versions.

Have you considered a fixed release in combination with rolling applications (i. e. Flatpak, Snap)?

If you choose Fedora (preferably one of the atomic variants, like Silverblue), you would also get a rolling kernel and rolling KDE Plasma desktop, so overall the experience can be quite close to a rolling release distribution if you install the desktop applications via Flatpak.

Ubuntu “interim” (non-LTS) releases are usually also fairly current and could be a good choice if you don’t mind Snap. There’s also the option of following the Ubuntu “devel” branch, which always refers to the current pre-release version of Ubuntu (e. g. 24.04 at the moment) and is rolling.

Just wanted to give you a different direction to think about. ;)

For servers there’s Docker/Kubernetes/Podman, which is well-established and serves a similar purpose as Flatpak on the desktop. Servers were actually first with the increase in popularity of containers.

90 % or more of my desktop (Fedora Kinoite and Silverblue) apps are Flatpaks already. I only have four rpm-ostree overlays (native packages) left: android-tools, brasero/k3b, syncthing (I could switch to SyncThingy for a Flatpak) and virt-manager/virtualbox

With Flatpak there is “flatpak override” which gives you the ability to grant additional permissions or restrict them even further. E. g. I use it to connect KeePassXC with Firefox or to disallow access to the X server to force almost all apps to use Wayland instead of X. It also allows me to prevent apps from creating and writing into arbitrary directories in my home.

Once I reinstall my home server, all its server software will be containerised as well (five years ago I didn’t see the necessity yet). I am tired of having to manage dependencies with every (Nextcloud) upgrade. I want something that can auto update itself completely with minimal or no breakage, just like my desktops.

Any source for that claim?

At least the Fairphone 3 and 4 use public test keys in production:

• https://twitter.com/GrapheneOS/status/1546224158769659904
• https://forum.fairphone.com/t/bootloader-avb-keys-used-in-roms-for-fairphone-3-4/83448/11
• https://web.archive.org/web/2if_/https://www.reddit.com/r/GrapheneOS/comments/10b5x4n/comment/j67pbny/

Seems like at least the Fairphone 5 finally uses production keys: https://forum.fairphone.com/t/avb-keys-used-in-roms-for-fairphone-5/100314

(Hopefully) obviously /s

Thanks for fixing this issue! I didn’t even know until today that it affected non-Linux systems as well.

Oh no, I thought that was a feature. I came to rely on it to transcribe long tab titles into my text editor. Is there any way to restore the old behaviour in Firefox? Otherwise I’ll have to stick with Firefox 118 or switch web browsers, since Firefox 119 seems to break my longstanding workflow. :(

Any ideas?