Jack of random trades at random times that randomly catch my interest for a random amount of time.
Rufus is great and I still keep a copy around, but I haven't gone back since I found Ventoy. You just run Ventoy on your stick, and then drag and drop any and all bootable ISOs into it. When you boot it, you get a list of all the ISOs to work with.
The only caveat is that you absolutely have to eject the USB, or else Ventoy probably will corrupt. That's a small price to pay to have Arch, Mint, Fedora, NixOS, and Win11 all on one OS ISO toolkit drive, plus I always eject my drives as a rule of thumb. Then all I have to do is update them every couple months.
Takes a lot more to fully deshittify it, though. I've been down that road. So much registry diving, so many third party apps, strongarming uninstallations of bloatware through brute force, and just all around weeks of work.
When the screenshot shit was announced the first time, I just got tired of looking for workarounds to disable or remove Microsoft's active attempts of policing, spying, and triple-dip profiting off it's paying customers.
To those who actually use or need a menstruation tracker app, if you use Android there is an open source, free option called Bluemoon on F-Droid.
Man, I could go for a refreshing... READMORE right now.
Disney Plus, Netflix, Hulu, Cable TV, etc.
The lower class usually get up for their hardworking but ill-paid jobs. The one thing they want to do is go home and turn on the TV and just have their one streaming service work when they've been busting ass all day.
The upper class doesn't really care what the price is, they just have every service stream what they want.
The middle class makes just little enough to not warrant paying that much for a shit streaming service so that they can save up for x hobby, so they'll pirate all day.
Lol, I just mention it because I have no other experience with Ladybird. There's an Ubuntu/Debian section and a Choco for Windows. I would assume macOS uses homebrew, but I didn't read that far into it. I can only confirm that I got the Arch version working after a bit of compiling.
I saved the best of my VHS for a long time. I couldn't get them for a while as I was moving around. The boxes were in a flood, but the tapes were at the top. Unfortunately, my yearbooks were at the bottom. Anyway, I finally got them out of my mom's basement where she'd been holding them for me. This was a couple weeks ago.
I was excited to see all those old movies again, but unfortunately I noticed on second glance that the film inside the tapes were either spotted white or completely white. That was the day that I learned that VHS tapes could actually rot. Its a shame...
You can already test it out in very early alpha, but I can tell you now that it's just a portal with very basic browser controls. You'll have to build it through the Python script.
I built it through Arch already and its a working browser is about all I can really say about it. The little I tried of it works.
The instructions to build the early alpha are on the github page here.
It wasn't supposed to stay Apple exclusive. In fact, when I last used Windows there was a beta build out for Arc. However, there were also multiple Firefox styles in the CSS Store that made Firefox into Arc.
Then Zen Browser came out, and I'm currently watching it get very popular. I don't doubt that Zen Browser is one of the reasons Arc is shutting down. It's nearly an exact copy, but now with more features (and is constantly coming out with even more faster than Arc can think of them).
I'm excited for Ladybird as well, but I'm not expecting anything crazy when it comes out of alpha and beta. I fully expect to wait a bit, maybe download to contribute some troubleshooting, but it may not be viable as a main use browser for a long time yet.
I had just learned how to shoot a rubber band with one hand at school in 5th grade. 1998ish. Thought it was the coolest thing. I had this teacher everyone hated. She was so self centered and mean.
So from the back of the class, I shot a tiny rubber band toward her. She unfortunately saw me out of the corner of her eye. She immediately went into hysterics and I was sent out of class to wait in the office. My mother was called to pick me up. This teacher was crying into the arms of the principle like some victim of some heinous act.
My mom found out that the teacher was one of her best friends from Catholic school. Was outraged at me. I had no idea wtf they were so mad about. I've shot tons of rubber bands in class and never before had they gone so nuts about it. I only find out later that they had told my mother I had pretended to shoot a gun at my teacher.
My mother threw me down two flights of stairs and held me on the wall by my neck, feet dangling. She hissed and spit in my face, telling me how embarrassed she was and how horrible I am. And to this day she doesn't believe I was shooting a fucking rubber band like kids fucking do.
I usually try to opt for Vivaldi for anything I need for Chromium. I know Microsoft too well at this point (since Windows 3.14). Like, Swiftkey is my favorite android keyboard and I forced myself to learn how to use Thumbkey. That's how much I just can't trust them anymore.
I only use Chrome if I'm going to be doing web development. That being said, I have heard decent things about Edge's performance lately. I could have dealt with MS shoving AI down my throat, but pics of my screen and ads in my start bar was the last straw.
Too bad I enjoy Github and Minecraft... otherwise I'd avoid their software altogether.
I actually trust Apple's security. They make bank on high end devices for high prices, enough where they don't need to rely on collecting and selling user data. Iirc, the only thing that really collects your data is Apple Music and Apple TV, but every paid sub streaming platform does that.
There's nothing wrong with Safari at all. I have my irks with Apple tech, but honestly they're probably one of the safer big corporations imo. I do love Airpods, though. I have a pair of Max and I can't get by with any other headphones now, lol. I just can't get used to mac and iOS, especially since I love open source android apps.
Makes sense about Orion. Its still brand new. Zen and Vivaldi are two of my absolute favorites, as well. I just switched back to Zen. I felt that Zen was weirdly more sluggish than Floorp for some reason. I mulled on it a bit and figured it out.
mousewheel.default.delta_multiplier_yis set to 300 in Floorp and 200 in Zen. I set it to 300 and it feels so much better.That's why I don't have any subscription services as well (aside from VPN and Debrid). I'm now less legally bound than those who use "legal" services (if you count extortion as legal).
Ngl, I'm going to bookmark this reply and see if I can get something similar set up. However, I will still have to look around for when communities open registration. The closest thing I was in back in the day was Demonoid when it first launched. I got in early through a friend who was a trusted member. Yes, it was torrents, but it was a completely private torrent economy.
That being said, torrents are still a security risk. I've just been using them for so long that I know the right channels and uploaders to go through in the public scene. I haven't had a single malicious file fot my last 8 years on Windows. Now that I'm on Linux, the risk is a bit less. There's still risk, but not as bad.
Zen Browser keeps me from going back to Vivaldi (I do love Vivaldi, don't get me wrong). They added the best of Vivaldi to Firefox. Workspaces, essential tabs, tiled tab windows, and side toolbars. There's a mod that reorganizes the theming to work with Firefox themes, but you can also right click the tab bar and pick any color under the sun, even multicolor gradients (I think up to 5 colors).
lmao Fair enough. Have you tried the Orion Browser yet? I was curious about it.
I'll give you an upvote for courage, lol. I just can't do it, myself. I'm not a fan of Google's moral ethics. Every time I open Chrome I feel vulnerable.
If you want to have one streaming service to rule them all, that'd be Stremio. I don't know how specific I want to get in this community, but there's ways of turning it into a torrent streamer. I pay $3.75 a month for it using debrid and have access to everything, even obscure movies. However, I always seed what I watch to at least 5x.
Stremio has an app for Android, Samsung TV, Windows, and Linux. I think mac and iOS, too, but I don't run those at all so I'm not sure. You can use catalog plugins to mimic Netflix, Hulu, etc. But you can also use it with your Netflix, Prime and other such streaming accounts.
Edit: Also, with debrid, you don't need a VPN. It does all the anonymity for you. That's the only thing that you have to pay for.
Oh hey. I just fixed some of the sluggish feeling of Zen. I thought about it overnight and had an idea. Turns out I was right. In about:config, Floorp has
mousewheel.default.delta_multiplier_yset to 300. Zen only has it set to 200. Might be going back to Zen for a bit now, lol. I also disabled all mods and will be re-enabling them 1 by 1 to see if they had anything to add to the slow feeling.
I have heard about the IoT version. I'd have to look more into it, but I doubt I'm going back now that I've learned so much about Linux. I can troubleshoot most of Arch without touching the docs or asking online now, so it really defeats the purpose of switching back.
I also enjoy putting in a little effort to get things working. That's the thing about Linux. Most people that daily drive it get a dopamine release from tinkering with it and fixing things, and I'm one of those people.
I know there has been a big "its for everyone" push these days, but its really not. So I'm glad the IoT version exists for those that want or need it.