As for laptops, there are a lot of other options like Tuxedo, NovaCustom, and Slimbook

I would avoid the Brax phone, they haven’t fulfilled orders and are super shady + social media influencer platform is never a great look. I would prefer the Fairphone, they’ve been around for ages, and you can install mobile Linux on their devices too since they let you unlock the boot loader. postmarketOS on the FP6 is developing rapidly and very exciting! Other pmOS supported devices like the OP6 or Pixel 3a series could be considered too, as well as the custom Android ROMs (Graphene, Calyx, etc.)

AsteroidOS is Linux on smartwatches, what more do you want? You also have Pebble if you’re into e-ink and that sort

As for TVs, it’s tricky, but just look for the non-smart ones (there are quite a few!), and I know Sony makes the Bravia TVs where you can set them to be “basic” non-smart mode. You could also go with a projector instead, those usually don’t have smart TV shenanigans. You can also use a Linux mini PC running Plasma Bigscreen and/or Kodi as an alternative to Google TV.

Mini PCs running some form of Linux (Bazzite, CachyOS, Fedora, Mint, whatever) are always awesome. You also have emulation stuff, like the MiSTER Pi mentioned by another user, but you could run emulation stuff on any cheap hardware (running Linux) just fine.

OpenWRT is supported by lots of routers, and GL.iNet makes routers that have it preinstalled. You also have the MikroTik routers, which run the Linux-based RouterOS (+ they are based in Latvia 🇱🇻)

Reolink cameras w/ Frigate and Home Assistant is the best combo.

The only wireless headphones I would recommend are the Fairphone Fairbuds Gen 2, since they won’t die in a few years w/ replaceable parts and battery, and even then, for 99% of usecases, I would rather go with IEMs + some wireless dongle (I use the Fiio BTR11, but others exist too, in particular, the Fiio Snowsky Retro Nano has replaceable batteries of an esoteric form factor). You get the convenience of wireless as well as all the benefits of wired: harder to lose, better audio quality, WAY cheaper (seriously, I spent less than $30 on my kit), longer lasting, etc. I would recommend the Kiwi Ears Cadenza and Truthear Gate, and I’ve heard the Hexa/Pure is great too. Moondrop’s Chu 2 are awesome too with a metal shell for a ridiculously low price, but the brass nozzle oxidises and clogs in humid environments (I am in the humid land of HK, so no go for me)

As for printers, the Open Printer is crowd funding and looks really neat! You of course have the Brother laser printers too, but not sure about their telemetry and tracking.

I am moving to Piefed at scallisto@retrofed.com (https://retrofed.com/u/scallisto)

Jolla phone runs Sailfish OS (partially closed source, but Linux-based) while the Volla phones can either run Android or Ubuntu Touch (more open-source). They have very different aesthetics and target different prices too (the former is cheaper and has a plastic fantastic build, while the latter are glass slabs)

Personally, I’m rooting for postmarketOS, since it’s compatible with lots of devices. has the ability to install Flatpaks due to using a mainline (or at least closer to it) kernel over Ubuntu Touch and SailfishOS using the Android kernel (or at least parts of it I think, “proprietary blobs”), and recently the Fairphone 6 has been getting good pmOS development (super exciting! Even fingerprint has been made to work!)

I am moving to Piefed at scallisto@retrofed.com (https://retrofed.com/u/scallisto)

Aside from Wireguard, you have Wireguard alternatives-but-not-really-since-they-are-based-on-Wireguard like Netbird and Tailscale. The latter is more well-known, but the main downside is that, to connect to the cloud servers, you need a Google, Microsoft, or Github account to login. It can be self-hosted with Headscale (community project) though (and you don’t need an account for that, since it’s your hardware)! Netbird is similar to Tailscale, but you can use normal email login to use their cloud servers, and they offer official self-hosting support.

I am moving to Piefed at scallisto@retrofed.com (https://retrofed.com/u/scallisto)

Before writing a line of app code, I’m validating demand. And I’ll put my money where my mouth is: the landing page and the waitlist both run on a Debian box in my living room.

This isn’t trying to replace your monitoring server; it’s the mobile, unified, privacy-first front-end I keep wishing those had.

Hello, fellow human! Do you too enjoy the sweet sensations of smell and taste?

Just a small point, double negatives can get pretty confusing. Even in English, you often have double negatives becoming a negative rather than a positive, e.g. “I didn’t go nowhere” or “You don’t know nothing”. Changing which part of the phrase you emphasise can also change that, for instance, if you said “I didn’t go nowhere” it implies that you did in fact go somewhere (double negative becomes a positive when stressing the second negative). This gets all the more confusing when you bring in other languages, since they all handle double negatives differently!

Generally, there are a lot of used options out there (particularly from businesses upgrading their hardware), just like laptops. Even when shopping for new ones, I can find lots of cheap options (though they aren’t very good value usually, but they are enough to serve as a basic media box)

Raspberry Pis have unfortunately gotten very expensive, yes, but those are SBCs, not mini PCs?

Or a mini PC! (little guy that can be a bit smaller + cheaper too, you will need to get a keyboard and/or mouse for it though)

This seems super cool, you can curate your own search index :O

Being able to preview your search results offline is quite neat too!

One question though, how will you solve the issue of “echo chambers”, because from my understanding, it looks like it will only present results that you search for / have searched for, meaning for some people, you could be stuck with results that only support your view of the world.

One thing of note, since Pixelfed is part of the Fediverse, posts made on Pixelfed instances can be seen by users of Mastodon and other platforms that use the same protocol! It’s really neat!

their results seem mostly identical to ddg/bing too though it’s occasionally better than them for some reason

I believe Ecosia uses either Google or Bing search indexes depending on the region, but they are working on an independent index with Qwant that will hopefully be a good alternative! If you live in France, it’s already bring trialled!

But yeah, Ecosia is like any search engine and there is bit of greenwashing with LLMs and all. However, they are a non-profit with transparent earnings reports, and that makes them better than Google, Bing, DDG, etc. for me.

they geoblock certain countries including mine since 2023 or so

Dang, that sucks.

That’s fair enough (unfortunately, this is the case for most search engines aside from SearXNG instances I think)! Thankfully they do let you disable it, which is nice. I mostly like that they are quite transparent about how they operate! The planting trees thing is a nice bonus, but they certainly aren’t saints to the environment, no search engine is

searxng also doesn’t really seem to work these days…

Of note, this depends on the instance. I occasionally hop between public instances whenever one is no longer reliable. Google and friends are blocking requests from SearXNG instances because it is in their business interests to kill competition

As for alternatives, I would avoid DDG since they seem to be going a similar route as Google with a front page filled with ads and the emphasis towards their chatbot is not to my taste. Plus, DDG is hosted in the U.S., so privacy-wise it’s not as good. Startpage was purchased by an American advertising company some time ago, which isn’t great. Brave Search is also one, but they are doing some shady things on their browser with crypto and whatnot, so I don’t particularly trust them. Plus, they are an American for-profit.

Qwant and Ecosia are solid options, the former is a French for-profit and the latter a German non-profit, and they are working towards an independent European search index that is being trialled in France! Both are quite good, Qwant is shinier and magical blue, while Ecosia is simpler and earthy green.

Ecosia also uses a portion of their revenue for planting trees, which is really neat, and they are super transparent about where their earnings go!

I personally use a mix of SearXNG and Ecosia, and I sometimes use Qwant too for certain queries.

Understood! I have edited my comment to reflect that

Wait, I thought we recently agreed that LLM assisted projects require a [AIP] tag? Did you not see the pinned post, or are you not human?

edit: Wait, I have been told this is incorrect, it’s not a rule just yet and is still being discussed

As for me, I just use Syncthing between my devices so I have the same music files in my laptop and my phone. It works well as I don’t often change out the music I listen to, and plus it’s local files so no network required (good on an aeroplane, for example). I personally use an MPD client on my (Linux) laptop, while on Android I use Auxio (Lotus and Chocola are excellent too)

If that doesn’t work for you, there is Jellyfin as well: Finamp for specifically music playback, Findroid for general Jellyfin use. Am not hosting Jellyfin currently so I don’t have anything to add besides that, but do check out the docs if you need help setting up / maintaining it!

We were all kids at one point in time

Lots of modern phones no longer come with an IR blaster, which is a bit stupid I think but corporations got to save cost somewhere (+ a billion other places in the device, manufacturing, production, etc.)

I found the LearnLinuxTV tutorial on installing Nextcloud to be really good, and it’s been running great! It’s excellent if you want drive and has all the different other bits like notes, calendar, forms, office, etc.

However, you might also want to look at some other services too for specific tasks. I use Radicale for calendar, mostly because it was my first self-hosted service and I never bothered moving to the NC offering, but it’s very simple to setup and works well for me. Etherpad is good if you want shareable MD notes (but isn’t as great if you want private notes, for that local programs like Joplin, Marktext, and Markor are your best bet). For image hosting, Immich is always nice and has excellent mobile clients too (even on Linux mobile, you have the third-party Mimick!)

Quarrtarrmastarr? Or is that too much?

I personally just use local music playback, with SyncThing for syncing between devices. That mean I can listen to them offline!

On Android, I use Auxio, but Lotus and Chocola (previously CuteMusic) are awesome too.

On Linux, I use an mpd-based option called rmpc. Tauon and Gapless are also great! As for mobile Linux, Gapless is a good option that works pretty well. You might also like Plattenalbum, a GTK-based MPD client.