Seafile is not FOSS, as I understand it. But I tried it anyway, since I also found Nextcloud bloated.

In the end I went back to the purest strategy of all: peer-to-peer. My files are synced between devices over the local network using ssh, rsync and unison and never touch an internet server.

Thanks, that is useful. Roughly what I was thinking.

Can someone do a quick explainer of what this move to ARM means for free computing? The prospects for hassle-free installation of alternative OSs? Is it good news or bad?

Completely agree. Training normies to click OK on warnings like this is a no-good terrible idea.

In rc.conf put map f shell -tf $SHELL ~/myscript.sh. When you press f it will launch myscript.sh in a new terminal with the selection as an argument.

man ranger and check shell command for appropriate flags. For example, skip the -t if your script is in turn going to launch a GUI application.

Shell commands can easily be integrated into ranger.

Yes yes I do know that. Somehow China found it was “viable”, though. That is the issue.

We all agree on that and nothing stops us from doing things differently.

Sure. So let us do it better in Europe then. This just sounds like defensive excuses. Europe’s car makers could have decided - or been forced - to switch to electric. Europe could have banned the abomination that is the combustion scooter, or taxed to oblivion the SUV. We collectively decided that Volkswagen’s short-term profits are more important than our environment or our economic future. That’s on us, it’s not China’s fault.

Personal anecdote. I have recently been in China, specifically Shenzhen and a couple of other southern megacities.

Let me tell you all something: China is getting ahead of us. Shenzhen used to be known for its smokestacks. It is now at least as pleasant as any European city. Not only does it have an excellent metro, loads of green space and trees, wide sidewalks and cycle lanes. It also has silent streets with shockingly clean air. And for a simple reason: all the buses, all the scooters and motorbikes, and at least 40% of the private cars (not very numerous because of the great transit) are electric.

Europeans might be surprised to discover what a difference this electrification makes to a city. From personal experience of both, I can tell you that (IMO) Chinese cities are putting Swiss ones in the shade. This should be a pretty shameful situation for the supposed quality-of-life superpower that Europe imagines itself to be.

Instead of punishing China for getting ahead in a technological battle that will benefit us all, Europe should be copying it.

It if wasn’t farmers making your food, it would be you making it. If it wasn’t other people providing all the goods and services farmers need, they would be doing it.

Human society is interdependent. Farmers are not aristocrats, they are ordinary citizens providing a service in return for money. Including quite a lot of taxpayers’ money, incidentally.

Farmers are on the wrong side of history but we continue to empower them for irrational sentimental reasons. An unfortunate cocktail.

For once, China is not the bad guy here. It used industrial policy to get ahead in green technology. Now it wants to reap the benefits. Exactly as the West, Japan and the Asian tigers did in the past when they had a technological edge.

Europe could have done the same. Nothing was stopping it. Instead, we have a car lobby in denial, and a decadent public who vote for clueless populists.

In contrast to those “many reviews”, this reviewer says that Ubuntu is fine and always has been.

Seriously, Ubuntu hate is mostly just Snap hate. The Snap problem is overstated and easily worked around if necessary. Ubuntu remains a very solid choice on desktop.

Indeed, this is the case with Revolut, a bank which literally requires iOS or Android spyware to sign up and use. But it’s rare. And a reason to NEVER USE that bank.

Alternative utopia: do online banking in a desktop web browser while seated comfortably at home, rather than on a street corner in the sun squinting at a tiny screen.

This seems a bit nihilistic. Yes, Google is in the driving seat but it still has to deal with Apple and even Mozilla within the W3C. So a framework for open web standards exists, and a new engine is always just one fork away. Surely what is lacking is exactly this kind of antitrust regulation, which might incentivize competition at last. So thank you, EU Commission. The web standard is all we have. If it’s broken then we need to get fixing it right now.

Crazy that you are getting hate for this perfectly reasonable and well-expressed opinion. No counter-arguments, just “muh i no like muh go away”.

Apparently this place is not so different from the R-site at all.

As I see it, there are two solutions to the trust problem.

The strong solution: read the source code.

The weak solution: trust as few actors as possible, if possible a single one - and download from their website.

I was advocating the second solution.

Wish I could agree with you on the underlying point.

My own anecdata is of normies who are absolutely resistant to the very idea of touching Linux because of its connotations of complexity. And really I don’t think they’re wrong.

My personal preference for GUI liveUSB tools is [etc]

Imagine what even this phrase must sound like to someone who has only ever used pre-installed Windows. Not being facetious.

My opinion remains that Linux could only benefit ifs distros would take hand-holding to its logical extreme and provide the actual Windows-Mac executables that make installing Linux a genuinely one-click experience. Last time I checked, Fedora did this. Pity it’s Fedora and not Debian.