I agree that we need to find a way to make this communal rather than individualistic, but government backing isn’t that. It would be nice if that happened and all, but with a thesis like that it feels like it’s missing the mark calling state-hosting "community ". How do we make self-hosted services something that can serve at the level of the community? Like a load balancing reverse proxy that points to the servers those in the community can host and everyone invites their friends and neighbours.

I landed on Mint because it’s a simple no fuss distro that feels familiar to Windows refugees. I game on it just fine and use my computer for a lot of things so wanted something general. I bounced off Ubuntu because it has some decisions that are trying to protect you from actually learning Linux, which is a priority to me.

As a professional spreadsheet pusher, I can confidently say that LibreOffice (the Linux version of MS Office) has been able to do everything I needed that word/excel can, and then some.

But really any distro will be able to install the software you need, and it’s easy to switch. Just try it and have fun.

Thanks!

The more concerning thing going on is Debian potentially embracing AI, which I am very much not a fan of.

Can you elaborate on this, or point me to where I can read about it? Getting away from AI was a part of the reason I ditched Windows :/

I recently started migrating my email and went with mailbox.org. I opted for it based on it having a good balance of ethical/environmental stances, support for custom email domain (so email doesn’t feel like vendor lock in in the future), and a business model focusing on paid service.

There were a lot of options but ultimately I just wanted something “good enough” rather than spending weeks on comparing. A part of that decision was realizing I didn’t care about getting something with the best possible privacy - email is predominantly an insecure medium and things with E2EE work only if the recipient is in the same ecosystem, which is rare. In practice I’m not going to trust anything sensitive to email regardless, so I might as well prioritize picking something that looks like a decent and stable balance.

Mailbox.org has calendar but I haven’t really played with it much. I’m realistically going to look in to look in to something self hosted since I will require more features than most email providers will offer, so I don’t want to tether the two services. That was a part of the reasoning for Mailbox.org over something with more services - I wanted email, not something trying to be the next ecosystem - that’s what I was trying to get away from!

Thanks for explaining. There is a lot of conflicting information out here - do you have any sources for where I can learn more?

See my response to feebleneedle. No port forwarding limits connections

Were you using a VPN at the time? I was under the impression that the issue is at standard anything involving ports just doesn’t work with a VPN because it would be trying to get to the port on the VPN, which the VPN would rightly refuse unless you’d set it up to forward that port

Do you know where I can learn more about this? That’s a pretty important detail to be as glossed over as it is in this community

Doesn’t that completely defeat the purpose of using a VPN?

Mullvad is great if privacy is your only metric, but it’s not unique in that respect and no port forwarding is a serious limitation in this context. I’ve been looking into alternatives and AirVPN and OVPN both look reputable.

See my response to feebleneedle. It works, but it’s not just that it’s slower. Port forwarding is important for the health of the community.

AirVPN and OVPN are options that seem to be of similar integrity to Mullvad.

I think it’s both? I’m assuming you get fewer seeds you can connect to as well.

Either way, seeding issues are leeching issues, in the grand scheme of things.

Edit: I only stress the seed side because I’ve found I get things plenty fast even with Mullvad, so not explaining the issue and just talking about down speed can make it seem unnecessary, when it is in fact critical to the health of the community.

Without port forwarding you can only connect to those who do have it set up. Doing so yourself allows you to be a better citizen of the internet and share with people who don’t know what it is.

(Caveat: I am one of those people who don’t understand it and am just parroting what was explained to me when I asked about this)

Humans do indeed contain multitudes, but I think this gives too much credit to the influence of corporate (and their political interference) interests. Enshittification is an active choice made in board rooms. Disinformation is an agenda. They’re not inevitable grassroots outgrowths.

Lemmy, curated to avoid AI, curtail corporate news, and where the admins and community are fighting bots and trolls is an example of the reclamation attempt.

And you know what? It’s kinda nice here.

Tldr: capitalist efficiency

There is a neat piece about the OS side; worth reading.

As someone who went with the Mullvad suggestion despite having heard about port forwarding, I think a big part of why is because whenever it comes up people don’t take the time to explain why port forwarding is important. Until I asked in this thread the only thing I’d seen is some vague handwaving about it being faster.

I’ve only just dipped my toes in so maybe this is off base, but the community seems to have an elitism problem. If the people who know are dismissive of ignorant noobs who want to learn, the long term health of the community suffers for it.

Oh yikes. Thanks for explaining!

What’s wrong with not using port forwarding?

The prison industrial complex: hold my beer