The very same.

They’re lobbying the EU for backdoors in e2ee so they can sell their tech stack to scan all our private communication. https://www.thorn.org/solutions/for-platforms/

Ah yes, the scanner software company Thorn that’s trying to lobby chat control into existence in the EU. Sorry but I don’t trust them or their surveys.

That said, spreading deepfakes of others without their consent is obviously wrong.

Nevermind, it’s been abandoned by the company that contributed the most to it.
https://lwn.net/Articles/882460/

I haven’t tried it myself but there is libreoffice online
https://www.libreoffice.org/download/libreoffice-online/
https://hub.docker.com/r/libreoffice/online/

Their site works fine without allowing javascript, that way it turns into quite a simple thing too!

1. Does the distro I pick matter?
   Packages
   When you install a distro it will have repositories of apps that you can easily install and easily keep updated using either the GUI (GNOME Software for GNOME, Discover for KDE) or the package manager in terminal (dnf in Fedora, apt in kubuntu and mint). It’s similar to how you install apps on a smartphone.
   The good thing about the apps from the default repository is that they’re (in theory) tested to work well with the distro.
   You can also install applications from other sources when necessary.
   Update Frequency and new tech
   Another difference is how new kernel and software you get from the repos.
   The latest Debian Stable runs kernel 6.1 while Fedora just updated to 6.12 and arch has been running 6.12 since december.
   If you’re running the newest hardware then the chance of having drivers available automatically increases with a newer kernel.

2. Company-run distros and alternatives:
   In my opinion Ubuntu is the ones doing the most forcing as of now, and even they are angels compared to Microsoft.
   Fedora had discussions about including opt-out Telemetry to aid them getting data to improve the distro. They listened to community feedback and backpedaled that into opt-in metrics:
   https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Changes/Telemetry
   https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Changes/Metrics
   Debian and Arch are both examples of distros without enterprise involvement and that have no upstream distro that can affect their releases.
   Map of distros here: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1b/Linux_Distribution_Timeline.svg

3. Stability of the distro:
   Of your frontrunners I’ve only run Fedora but that has been stable and been working well for me for my primary PC. So has Debian which I run on my servers (I have a Debian VM running Portainer for dockers, one for running Jellyfin and a third for Forgejo).

4. Monitor support
   Multi monitor support
   I don’t have the desktop space for double monitors personally, but I’ve heard that KDE 6 (Plasma) handles multi monitor support well.
   HDR
   Should be working since November

• https://9to5linux.com/kde-plasma-6-2-4-re-enables-hdr-mode-for-users-on-nvidia-565-and-linux-6-11

5. Both KDE and GNOME are customizable. KDE is more similar to Windows and I realized that most of my GNOME customizations was to make it more similar to Windows and KDE. I’ve since switched to KDE and must say I really enjoy having a proper file browser as default. Nautilus (default GNOME file browser) has been simplified to death and caused me to create a script to replace it with nemo.

Nvidia is a whole lot simpler to use than people make it sound like, though I’ll stay team red:
https://rpmfusion.org/Howto/NVIDIA#Current_GeForce.2FQuadro.2FTesla
Fedora guide for Nvidia drivers unless you’re running a really old card:

sudo dnf update -y # Update your machine and reboot
sudo dnf install akmod-nvidia # Installs the driver
sudo dnf install xorg-x11-drv-nvidia-cuda #optional for cuda/nvdec/nvenc support (required for Davinci Resolve)  

• Gaming including emulation
  First person shooters with kernel intrusive Anticheat won’t work in Linux as they expect to spy on a Windows OS.
  Other than that gaming on Linux is really getting there as I’m sure you’ve realized when using a Steamdeck.
  Outside of Steam you have Heroic Games Launcher, Lutris and Bottles for running windows games on Linux.
  I’m mostly using Lutris but I think Heroic Games launcher is the more popular one.
• Firefox
  Default browser in most distros
• VLC
  Available in most default distro repositories.
• Spotify
  Available as a Flatpak on Flathub, haven’t used it myself.
• Discord
  I know people has had some trouble with screen sharing but that the DiscordCanary (think Beta version) solves it.
  https://github.com/flathub/com.discordapp.Discord/issues/380
• Godot
  Can be downloaded as a simple bin file from their own site: https://godotengine.org/download/linux/
  Also available as a Flatpak on Flathub
• Visual Studio
  The closest you get is VSCode.
• Git
  Not a problem.
• Photoshop cs6, audacity, davinci resolve
  Photoshop might be trouble, Audacity and Davinci Resolve should work.
• Misc “Tinkering” (Handbrake, dvd burners/rippers, Really any weird thing I come across that I want to tinker with)
  Handbrake is available as a Flatpak on Flathub, there’s dvd burner applications available too.

Does that mean that you consider the temporary loss of her voice the same harm as if she would’ve lost access permanently?
Do keep in mind I do not believe the banning to be ok either - but I’d rather have a company where the human factor sometimes fails that can properly undo their mistake and apologize than something like Meta where you cannot even get in touch with a human if something gets flagged.
The extreme of a company that never does a mistake would of course be the best but that’s never going to happen.

I hope for the self hosted solution that @[email protected] mentioned to become reality, both for people like Joyce and because it would be a step towards self hosted voice assistants for those of us that refuse to use cloud based ones.

When I first asked Sophia Noel, a company representative, about the incident, she directed me to the company’s prohibited use policy.

There are rules against threatening child safety, engaging in illegal behavior, providing medical advice, impersonating others, interfering with elections, and more.
But there’s nothing specifically about inappropriate language. I asked Noel about this, and she said that Joyce’s remark was most likely interpreted as a threat.

[…]

Joyce doesn’t hold a grudge—and her experience is far from universal.
Jules uses the same technology, but he hasn’t received any warnings about his language—even though a comedy routine he performs using his voice clone contains plenty of curse words, says his wife, Maria.
He opened a recent set by yelling “Fuck you guys!” at the audience—his way of ensuring they don’t give him any pity laughs, he joked.
That comedy set is even promoted on the ElevenLabs website.

Blank says language like that used by Joyce is no longer restricted.
“There is no specific swear ban that I know of,” says Noel.
That’s just as well.

And then she got an apology and got her account reinstated by ElevenLabs.

Regarding HoudiniFX it seems they have Linux installs, and a free (with watermark) version for hobbyists - https://www.sidefx.com/products/houdini-apprentice/
Other than that I’d say Blender is the goto app, showing up as one of the most popular apps in the Discover app.

My recommendation would be to use clonezilla or a similar tool to make an image of your windows install and save that on the external ssd.
Then I would install Fedora KDE or whatever’s your poison on the internal drive.
If you wanna switch back to windows then you can always use clonezilla, or your tool of choice, to restore the image.
You could also use KVM/Qemu in your linux distro to restore the image into a windows vm.
virt-manager gives you a desktop gui while cockpit + cockpit-machines gives you a nice webui for handling virtual machines in linux.

Clonezilla guide, for both linux and windows
https://www.linuxbabe.com/backup/how-to-use-clonezilla-live

Both Cockpit and Virt-Manager are available in Fedora KDE’s Discover app if you prefer GUI installs:
Cockpit

Virt-Manager

Reason I went or self-hosting Forgejo is to know it when federation comes along for real.
I’d love being able to federate my self-hosted Forgejo with my friends self-hosted Forgejo servers.
https://forgejo.org/2025-01-monthly-update/#federation

Linux Routing Fundamentals

Linux has been a first class networking citizen for quite a long time now. Every system running a Linux kernel out of the box has at least three routing tables and is supporting multiple mechanisms for advanced routing features from policy based routing (PBR), to VRFs(-lite), and network namespaces (NetNS). Each of these provide different levels or separation and features, with PBR being the oldest one and VRFs the most recent addition (starting with kernel 4.3).

This article is the first part of the Linux Routing series and will provide an overview of the basics and plumbings of Linux routing tables, what happens when an IP packet is sent from or through a Linux box, and how to figure out why. It’s the baseline for future articles on PBR, VRFs, and NetNSes, their differences as well and applications.

SnappyMail seem to be a fork of Rainloop and both Rainloop and Snappymail appear to allow multiple providers - https://snappymail.eu/
Cypht seems to be a similar solution where you selfhost a webserver that acts as a web client to external email providers - https://www.cypht.org/documentation/
I find nothing about push notifications for either of those solutions though, and I’m not sure about how much the webclients cache.

Uconsole bigger one - https://www.clockworkpi.com/home-devterm

Beepberry - https://beepy.sqfmi.com/
https://liliputing.com/beepberry-is-a-79-hackable-pocket-computer-kit-with-a-blackberry-keyboard/

Colorberry - https://www.elecrow.com/colorberry.html
https://github.com/hyphenlee/colorberry

PC Pilet old but cool looking one - https://soulscircuit.com/pilet
https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/pilet-mini-pi-5-modular-computer/

ESP32 - ESP32 is a SoC, example of handheld using it is the LILYGO T-Deck Plus - https://lilygo.cc/products/t-deck-plus-1
https://linuxgizmos.com/updated-t-deck-plus-an-esp32-handheld-device-with-gps-and-lora-support/

Mecha Comet with the switchable keyboards - https://mecha.so/comet
https://www.geeky-gadgets.com/modular-linux-handheld-mecha-comet/

Some links to help checking out the handhelds mentioned.

That they do, but your contacts doesn’t have to get it anymore.
A self-hosted matrix stack built from source with matrix clients built from source with e2ee implemented that you yourself have the competence to verify the encryption and safety of would be the only secure communication I know of if you don’t want to trust a third party.

Yeah, the glaring problem of having to share your phone number is gone too:
https://support.signal.org/hc/en-us/articles/6712070553754-Phone-Number-Privacy-and-Usernames

OpenAI does not make hardware.

Yeah, I didn’t mean to imply that either. I meant to write OneAPI. :D
It’s just that I’m afraid Nvidia get the same point as raspberry pies where even if there’s better hardware out there people still buy raspberry pies due to available software and hardware accessories. Which loops back to new software and hardware being aimed at raspberry pies due to the larger market share. And then it loops.

Now if someone gets a CUDA competitor going that runs equally well on Nvidia, AMD and Intel GPUs and becomes efficient and fast enough to break that kind of self-strengthening loop before it’s too late then I don’t care if it’s AMDs ROCm or Intels OneAPI. I just hope it happens before it’s too late.

That do sound difficult to navigate.
With OpenAPI OneAPI being backed by so many big names, do you think they will be able to upset CUDA in the future or has Nvidia just become too entrenched?
Would a B580 24GB and B770 32GB be able to change that last sentence regarding GPU hardware worth buying?

I don’t have any personal experience with selfhosted LMMs, but I thought that ipex-llm was supposed to be a backend for llama.cpp?
https://yuwentestdocs.readthedocs.io/en/latest/doc/LLM/Quickstart/llama_cpp_quickstart.html
Do you have time to elaborate on your experience?

I see your point, they seem to be investing in every and all areas related to AI at the moment. Personally I hope we get a third player in the dgpu segment in the form of Intel ARC and that they successfully breaks the Nvidia CUDA hegemony with their OneAPI:
https://uxlfoundation.org/
https://oneapi-spec.uxlfoundation.org/specifications/oneapi/latest/introduction

All GDDR6 modules, be they from Samsung, Micron, or SK Hynix, have a data bus that’s 32 bits wide. However, the bus can be used in a 16-bit mode—the entire contents of the RAM are still accessible, just with less peak bandwidth for data transfers. Since the memory controllers in the Arc B580 are 32 bits wide, two GDDR6 modules can be wired to each controller, aka clamshell mode.

With six controllers in total, Intel’s largest Battlemage GPU (to date, at least) has an aggregated memory bus of 192 bits and normally comes with 12 GB of GDDR6. Wired in clamshell mode, the total VRAM now becomes 24 GB.

We may never see a 24 GB Arc B580 in the wild, as Intel may just keep them for AI/data centre partners like HP and Lenovo, but you never know.

Well, it would be a cool card if it’s actually released. Could also be a way for Intel to “break into the GPU segment” combined with their AI tools:

They’re starting to release tools to use Intel ARC for AI tasks, such as AI Playground and IPEX LLM:
https://game.intel.com/us/stories/introducing-ai-playground/
https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/docs/discrete-gpus/arc/software/ai-playground.html

https://game.intel.com/us/stories/wield-the-power-of-llms-on-intel-arc-gpus/
https://github.com/intel-analytics/ipex-llm

• https://lemmy.world/comment/13094175