All of my devices except my work one are now Linux.
I have an old surface go 2 that good a massive new lease on life from using arch plasma. Double the battery life and everything. It could no longer get updates from MS because there was no longer enough space on the main drive to download and install the next update.
Then I have an old retro gaming pc that used to be for XP gaming but I ended up sticking bazzite on it for a test and it’s stayed that way and because of that when I built my girlfriend’s latest PC we decided to go bazzite desktop for her. And after getting past a few growing pains at the beginning that made it look like we made the wrong decision (due to an old 10xx gtx gpu - now on 3050) she’s been enjoying it and now it’s just standard.
Then I have my proper gaming PC that I use like a console so I put bazzite-deck on it as soon as I got an AMD card. And I’ve never felt better. HTPC console like gaming on windows was a fucking arse-on, even with steam big picture mode, because it doesn’t get all of the cool bells and whistles that let you control basic system settings right from steam like you can on steam os and bazzite deck.
For work I’ve started moving away from visual studio to VS Code (i know it’s still MS but I do C# .NET work and rider is too expensive, I don’t want a subscription for an IDE) to allow me to easily transition to fully working on Linux if the opportunity ever arises. Whether it be with my current employer and me convincing them to let me to install Linux on my laptop or with a future company. We’ll see which comes first ;)
Now it’s time to get and decouple from Google. Currently figuring out with android auto maps app I want (waze won’t run for some reason, my current winner at the moment is tom tom amigo). Then it’s on to getting a password manager, then a new browser (preferably way more lightweight than chrome) and potentially a Google pay replacement(?).
Any suggestions and opinions from anyone here - even though this is tangentially off topic - would be greatly appreciated.
I used vscodium for a bit but their latest C# Dev kit is locked to VS Code proper :(
I even made a cool bash script that would download and install ms vs store extensions and all of their dependencies before hitting this roadblock (to get the ones not available on open vsx).
Thanks for the password manager suggestions, I’ll look into them when I get a chance.
I’ve been looking into firefox forks too.
I would like to keep contactless via my phone as I don’t ever really carry my wallet with me anymore these days so maybe Google pay will have to stay. Bit annoying that it won’t be able to be used on whatever browser I end up going with though :(
Yeah, there really aren’t any good contactless alternatives to Google, Apple, and Samsung.
My current setup is reasonably good, I have a Google Watch (WiFi only) that only connects at home, and I only use the Google Watch app on a separate Android profile. The Wallet app refreshes payment tokens, and I don’t need any Google spyware running for regular purchases.
I’m hoping some cryptocurrency or something will get widespread enough so I can have FOSS contactless payments. I don’t think the traditional finance industry will ever support FOSS payments.
Use the free Rider for home and ask any new employer for a commercial license. It’s a pretty mainstream piece of software. There’s really no reason an employer should force you to use Visual Studio.
For those times I need Microsoft tools, I keep a Windows VM handy on my Linux PC. I feel much better keeping Windows contained and mostly turned off.
I’m not being forced to use visual studio. But because of dev ops licenses we get visual studio licenses alongside it so because of that the company isn’t willing (and rightly so in my opinion) to foot the expensive (for a small company) bill for rider.
All of my devices except my work one are now Linux.
I have an old surface go 2 that good a massive new lease on life from using arch plasma. Double the battery life and everything. It could no longer get updates from MS because there was no longer enough space on the main drive to download and install the next update.
Then I have an old retro gaming pc that used to be for XP gaming but I ended up sticking bazzite on it for a test and it’s stayed that way and because of that when I built my girlfriend’s latest PC we decided to go bazzite desktop for her. And after getting past a few growing pains at the beginning that made it look like we made the wrong decision (due to an old 10xx gtx gpu - now on 3050) she’s been enjoying it and now it’s just standard.
Then I have my proper gaming PC that I use like a console so I put bazzite-deck on it as soon as I got an AMD card. And I’ve never felt better. HTPC console like gaming on windows was a fucking arse-on, even with steam big picture mode, because it doesn’t get all of the cool bells and whistles that let you control basic system settings right from steam like you can on steam os and bazzite deck.
For work I’ve started moving away from visual studio to VS Code (i know it’s still MS but I do C# .NET work and rider is too expensive, I don’t want a subscription for an IDE) to allow me to easily transition to fully working on Linux if the opportunity ever arises. Whether it be with my current employer and me convincing them to let me to install Linux on my laptop or with a future company. We’ll see which comes first ;)
Now it’s time to get and decouple from Google. Currently figuring out with android auto maps app I want (waze won’t run for some reason, my current winner at the moment is tom tom amigo). Then it’s on to getting a password manager, then a new browser (preferably way more lightweight than chrome) and potentially a Google pay replacement(?).
Any suggestions and opinions from anyone here - even though this is tangentially off topic - would be greatly appreciated.
VSCodium is a thing too if you want to un-Microsoft even further.
https://vscodium.com/
I use it for C# development on Linux and it works well.
Bitwarden and Keepass are usually the go tos, depending on your use case.
Firefox or if you want to decouple from Mozilla as well, Librewolf works pretty well.
I’m not aware of any open Google Pay replacements other than taking a card with you.
As soon as you get rid of Google on your phone, you get rid of Google Pay.
I used vscodium for a bit but their latest C# Dev kit is locked to VS Code proper :(
I even made a cool bash script that would download and install ms vs store extensions and all of their dependencies before hitting this roadblock (to get the ones not available on open vsx).
Thanks for the password manager suggestions, I’ll look into them when I get a chance.
I’ve been looking into firefox forks too.
I would like to keep contactless via my phone as I don’t ever really carry my wallet with me anymore these days so maybe Google pay will have to stay. Bit annoying that it won’t be able to be used on whatever browser I end up going with though :(
Yeah, there really aren’t any good contactless alternatives to Google, Apple, and Samsung.
My current setup is reasonably good, I have a Google Watch (WiFi only) that only connects at home, and I only use the Google Watch app on a separate Android profile. The Wallet app refreshes payment tokens, and I don’t need any Google spyware running for regular purchases.
I’m hoping some cryptocurrency or something will get widespread enough so I can have FOSS contactless payments. I don’t think the traditional finance industry will ever support FOSS payments.
Btw Rider is now free for non commercial use
This is for my job…
You could ask your employer for a license I guess
Then I’m reliant on my current workplace rather than figuring out a consistent way to code at work, outside of work and at any other future workplace.
Don’t want to have to get used to one kind of workflow to then not being able to use it in another setting.
Use the free Rider for home and ask any new employer for a commercial license. It’s a pretty mainstream piece of software. There’s really no reason an employer should force you to use Visual Studio.
For those times I need Microsoft tools, I keep a Windows VM handy on my Linux PC. I feel much better keeping Windows contained and mostly turned off.
I’m not being forced to use visual studio. But because of dev ops licenses we get visual studio licenses alongside it so because of that the company isn’t willing (and rightly so in my opinion) to foot the expensive (for a small company) bill for rider.
Which is why I’ve landed on vs code.