I use Obsidian which is a closed source application but focused on open data standards, and with a thriving community of extensions and use cases. The main competitors of Obsidian are Notion (closed source cloud service) and Logseq (open source). So, why Obsidian? Why Obsidian? Freemium model, including various ways to help fund the organization ... Read more
Git is great, and even better as a core part of a full development / deployment toolchain. These days there are choices as to which more robust Git platform to use. First, those not to use: Github (owned by Microsoft), proprietary Gitlab (owned publicly traded company), open core Both of these are worrisome for privacy ... Read more
This is meant to help with selecting and installing a chrome-based browser, with minimal tracking and other cruft. Ungoogled Chromium for Debian Actually there are a variety of OS builds for ungoogled Chromium. For Debian, the simplest is the add repository and install manually option. echo 'deb http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/home:/ungoogled_chromium/Debian_Sid/ /' | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/home:ungoogled_chromium.list curl -fsSL ... Read more
I have not played with Mobian (yet), but it, and two other projects (Termux and UserLAnd), are quite promising. The biggest issue seems to be hardware at this point, as there are only Pine Phone and Tab, and Purism Librum, as well as one or two other devices are supported. That said, the Mobian project ... Read more
Current cost-effective computing is focused on small, mobile, and Linux + Windows + Android. The Windows is for general familiarity and games for the children Current Devices Linux c214 - Ampton (ASUS C214MA) chromebook with Debian 12 (Bookworm) and Breath 4gb / 32gb + 256gb microsd n8 - NUC8i3BEH (Intel NUC) Debian 12 (Bookworm) 16gb ... Read more
There are many choices for PDF readers and editors for the Linux platform. I've used a variety over the years. Lately I had preferred these two: Xournal++ (xournalpp), which is a reader and editor, and is touted as a handwriting notetaking software with PDF annotation support ... supports pen input from devices such as Wacom ... Read more
Termux is an Android application (and plugins) which provides a Linux environment as a terminal emulator. Actually the Termux terminal doesn't need to be used, as it is possible to access various elements via API. The main support is various programming languages. Access to repositories via Git. And using Rclone, one can mount cloud drives ... Read more
Major update to this post as of April 2024, nearly 4 years later The below is woefully out of date. Trying to do the same thing with the same product (but different device) results in tears, mainly around Xiaomi OEM unlocking. The unlock tools simply don't work on the Linux and Windows devices I've tried ... Read more
Because ChromeOS is simply ridiculous in terms of resource requirements (on devices meant for it), the only proper approach is to install or boot from a USB drive running Debian Linux (in this case, Debian Stable). Note: there is GalliumOS but it seems to have stalled development. There are various steps involved in getting this ... Read more
There are low-end and high-end Chromebooks. This is about relatively low-end devices, specifically an ASUS C214MA which is a cheap, somewhat small, ruggedized device meant for the schooling market. It has an 11.6" HD+ screen and a 4gb/32gb RAM/ROM configuration. In our household we've run up against the limits of this device in a variety ... Read more