irotsoma

Yes, that too. I should have said want to code stuff…and continue to maintain it…

KDE if you want to just configure stuff. Gnome if you want to code or manually style stuff.

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Yeah I think hashes in the same folder are only valuable as a check to make sure you downloaded the file successfully. Which isn’t a big issue for at least the around 80% of internet users who have access to broadband. They are only useful for security if the hash is on the website that you click on and then you download and verify it manually.

Not OP, but for me the issue is if you want to override the default and make it opt-out, especially sine the opt-out process isn’t that well documented, then you should realize that support is a necessary part of that process and fix problems as they arise rather than resorting to name calling and hostile behavior when something you published is broken. It’s a responsibility of taking on that kind of project. Either that or make it explicitly opt-in and give users a warning like with beta version opt-in notifications that the packages are not official and issues may not be fixed as quickly as the official releases.

I got an ASUS Zenbook about a year ago for about $1,500: model UX3404VC-BB99T. But it looks like it’s no longer available:

https://www.bestbuy.com/site/asus-zenbook-14-120hz-oled-touch-laptop-evo-intel-13-gen-core-i9-with-32gb-memory-nvidia-geforce-rtx-3050-1tb-ssd-gray/6548463.p?skuId=6548463

It has pretty decent specs. Intel gen 13 Core i9, nice looking touchscreen, 32GB of RAM, etc., and it all works out of the box with Ubuntu and now Fedora. It did have some issues with plain Debian, but that’s fairly common with Debian and newer hardware.

Although that particular laptop is not around anymore, there might be some other Zenbooks as I have found they tend to be Linux-friendly in general. And ASUS gets a lot of hate for whatever reason, but I’ve always found them to be good for the price.

Anytime there is an update, files are often deleted during that process so they can be replaced with new files or because those files are no longer part of the new version being installed. If an error occurs during this process, it is possible that an application will appear not to be installed because it’s broken.

Anyway, most software does at least partially “uninstall” when it is updating, so if the install fails, then it’s always possible that an update will have uninstalled something. That’s just updates regardless of operating systems, package managers, etc.

I mean, bugs are a part of all software. Stability is about reliability. That if you boot up your computer you are less likely to spend the first hour or two troubleshooting unless you just did a major upgrade. I’m not saying Arch is unstable, just less stable.

Apple hardware is good, but not priced at the same quality to price ratio because there’s no competition. You can get other brands with higher quality at the same price point that better supported by Linux.

I think that was the point there. Not that Apple has bad hardware, but lack of competition and the premium for the product family mean you can get higher specs per dollar with many other manufacturers and you can find hardware that won’t require “jailbreaking” or other workarounds or missing drivers to get it working with Linux.

Mine has those, but it was a different model that had the hardware required to do WiFi. Likely it’s not included and unless the device was designed to modify, it’s likely that the motherboard doesn’t have a way to add it easily and there won’t be much space to do your own WiFi card and soldering if the board does have the connections and support in the firmware/BIOS. Best bet would be a USB WiFi card.

There’s too much of a fine line in what is considered hate and what is considered “alternative facts”. The current state in the US shows how language can be twisted to mean the opposite and how easy it has always been to dehumanize some group in order to make laws not apply to them.

Arch is more cutting edge and thus less stable in very general terms. And is would be a learning curve for someone used to Debian based distros.

Sounds like this might be specific to your brand of TV. I have a Sony and there’s a bunch of Sony junk on there that I disabled a long time ago. But my TV app doesn’t have any ads in it yet. I’m guessing your manufacturer added ads to their TV app and made a deal with Google to use them as the ad provider. Unfortunately, those apps are relatively proprietary since they are supposed to be primarily just a simple UI for the tuners and so mostly hardware specific. Not saying there aren’t replacements, but likely that would require someone to reverse engineer some of of the hardware firmware’s APIs rather than web APIs that most apps interface with and aren’t guaranteed to be the same across models. Those are only available if you own an actual TV, so it’s less likely to exist.

Anyway, my point is that your searching probably needs to focus on the TV rather than the Android/Google TV platform as a whole. Look on forums devoted to the TV brand. You may have more luck.

The other alternative might be to block the ads on your router, but that may or may not work or cause some unintended inconveniences. For example I have Google’s DNS blocked and my wifi constantly drops and reconnects even when I only want to watch locally hosted content because the TV thinks it’s offline and needs to fix the connection.

I distance myself from companies run by people who say or explicitly support people who say that I don’t or shouldn’t exist. There are a few other things that make me distance myself from companies, but that one is a pretty hard line. (I’m gender “non-compliant” and on the Autism spectrum among other things that have been explicitly said don’t exist, shouldn’t exist, or need to be “cured”). Otherwise, I try to distance myself from any companies who explicitly collect and sell my information and other things that I find problematic, but that’s not always possible.

But the shithead exec is supportive of fascists which means privacy is secondary to the desires of the current regime. That’s just a standard part of fascism. And if the current regime is allowing untested backdoor code to be inserted in the Treasury department and NASA and the CDC and most major social media to strip out protections for people they don’t like, climate change, etc. Just imagine what someone who actually supports them ideologically would be willing to do.

That’s for use of the website. Not the device.

I said from the beginning it’s a deal breaker for me. You’re the one trying to convince me it’s not the issue I think it is.

And I’m not talking about the license to modify the firmware software itself. I’m talking about the EULA of the device itself. Pretty much any device you own that has any kind of software on it is not owned by you outright to modify as you wish. This website doesn’t show the agreement, but if it has a paid feature to unlock, it has to have one somewhere.

But were talking about firmware here. My computer also has firmware and an OS. I never have to touch that. Home Assistant is an application that I run on a computer. And I don’t have to modify the code in Home Assistant to get it to connect to another device. I just configure it.

I also install Linux on my laptop. Is that self hosting, too? We’re not talking about a server or a “host” other than the hardware device itself that lives in the house. If I want the server functionality, sure that’s self hosting the server software. Firmware and operating systems are generally not referred to as self-hosting since all devices need those things. Self-hosting refers generally to cloud-based applications, not standalone hardware firmware/OS.

This is a hardware device that is hard coded to connect only to a specific server that you have to pay to access if you want any API functionality. If I want to use my own I have to learn the programming language, figure out how to modify the Firmware, and then maintain a fork of that firmware indefinitely including making sure that there are no automatic updates since that would overwrite the modifications.

But i have no desire to compile and maintain a fork of software just to set a URL and auth token. And again, this is a license to modify the firmware, so they could at some point decide to revoke the license to modify the firmware or stop publishing security updates on their git repo to allow for merging into the fork I have to maintain. Probably won’t if they are reputable and don’t get acquired, but still a risk. It’s just not worth it for me for any open product I purchase.

Two issues I have:

1. There is a license on what you can install on the device. Open means no licenses on owned things, regardless of how open that license is initially, it can be changed.
2. The server it connects to is not configurable. You have to build your own firmware and maintain it and that goes back to the first point in case they decide to change the license.