Wow yeah, your position sounds awesome. I guess if I were in an indie studio I could be in charge of the engine or like, dev environments. I’ve found such benefit in doing gamedev on Linux, even if targeting Windows via cross-compiling, it’s so much faster and nicer. But what company would be willing to hire an intern to move over their whole workflow… not happening lol.

I am very serious about using Linux exclusively. I have ported/rewritten all of my university’s course materials in my past two years of gamedev studies and made them available for others. But the time has come to do an internship and I have yet to find a single studio I could be at while still using Linux. I feel like I reached a dead end tbh

I use this and love it! I can’t remember whether it was a “FairEmail Pro” feature though (one-time donation to unlock pro features). Regardless it works great.

I really, really hope this leads to development of data portability/server migration options. When I set my homeserver up, I chose Synapse as I didn’t know about the other servers. Now that I do, and would like to switch away because of Synapse’s performance problems and the new CLA stuff, I realize I and all my users are fully locked in, and would have to start from scratch (lose all chats, profiles, etc) to migrate.

I held on to my Time Steel for so long, but I finally switched to AsteroidOS on a Huawei Watch. No AOD, way too bright with lights off and unreadable in the sun, and have to charge it every night (barely lasts a day). I’m heavily considering going back.

I self host Whoogle and it’s a really nice interface. However, recently is has started to take longer and longer to load, sometimes giving up and returning a 502 error. If you don’t run into that however, it’s super nice!

I don’t understand where and how I need to file complaints. I live in France and Belgium, and have encountered several large and popular websites which enforce a “cookie wall”. This does not appear to respect the cookie law.

I’m seeing others recommend the G14 2022 all-AMD one. I have owned this model since it released and use it nearly every day. Despite the performance being pretty okay, it does have its share of deal-breakers which, if I knew them at the time, I would not have bought it:

• random freezing, this affects some units most zen3 amd laptops and it seems I got unlucky. ASUS has been ignoring the issue for a year despite the crashes being reproducible on Windows (Windows recovers from it while Linux just freezes)
• short stutters due to fTPM. Hopefully once Arch updates the kernel to include the recent patch that blacklists all AMD fTPMs fixes this, for now you have to email ASUS to get a secret BIOS that allows disabling it
• nonfunctional vfio (code 43) without patching BIOS variables with a sketchy script (have to disable rebar), rebinding after shutting down the vm still does not work at all for me
• overheating while gaming, even with fans forced to max
• wifi constantly disconnects. I mostly fixed it by buying a AX210 card from Intel
• bottom shell is super brittle and cracked when unscrewing it

The laptop itself would be the best Linux experience I’ve had if not for these issues. The trackpad is excellent and great for Wayland 1:1 gestures, the display and speakers are great, and the battery lasts a good 2-3h with light web browsing.

I’ve really enjoyed using PINE64 products. I use the excellent Pinecil soldering iron which is fully open source. I used a PineTime smartwatch until I got it water damaged (rip) which was a ton of fun to use. I have a pair of PineBuds wireless earbuds (default firmware is not open because of proprietary ANC, but last time I checked this is being worked on). I can’t speak for their laptops or phones, but I can definitely recommend the devices I do use if you’re willing to get involved in the community to work through and fix some of the existing issues.

Any keyboard with no internet permission should be “privacy-respecting”, as it can’t (as I understand it) send any data back to the developers. I’m personally a big fan of Unexpected Keyboard, though it’s definitely something to get used to.

I really enjoy it because everything is automatically maximized, but I can always easily put programs next to each other (f.e. my school uses Discord, so I have to have it open next to Matrix). The window rules are also very useful, as I can make Firefox always be on the first workspace, or my terminal always on the third. You can also make certain apps always float so password managers and such still work the same way.