someone else asked for a comparison of various distros on the same hardware. I'll write something after a few rounds of experimenting to see what does or doesn't work in a given distro. the phone's shipping from "across the pond" tho, so I won't see it for at least a few weeks.

yup! I'll be testing multiple distros on it to see what works best and post an update in a month or two (the shipping's gonna take awhile)

nice! the phone won't arrive for a few weeks anyway, so I'll try the latest available at the time. working audio is kind of important to me for a daily driver, but as a long-time debian fan mobian is my first choice for the core phone os - and as soon as possible. i might have to settle for something like ubuntu touch in the short term as a transitional distro, but debian/mobian is what I'm planning to eventually run (with kde's plasma-mobile interface)

encouraging!

thanks; I forgot about that one... I'll check it out!

Not your point, but I actually do recommend torrenting linux ISOs... often much faster than direct downloads from the devs' websites. ;-)

The main problem I see you running into is that if they decide for any reason to go after you (even just cause now they want your domain), it won't matter if they have a solid legal standing or not. They can afford to tie you up in court indefinitely, and you will likely be unable to outlast them.

Source: This is exactly what happened to my family. We have the same last name as a large corporation, and in the early days of the internet we registered a domain based on a name-related slogan they had used in an older commercial compaign. We were just hosting a basic family website and email, and clearly had no conflicting or overlapping IP. We even checked in advance - they did not own a trademark for the slogan or the name.

A few years later, they decided the wanted the domain for themelves, but instead of offering us a fair price to purchase, they first filed a trademark for the slogan and then sued us for the domain. If we'd had the funds to continue fighting we would have eventually won, but we're just a middle class family and they're a large multi-national corporation with near infinite funds to pay their lawyers. We lost the domain, and it cost us a small fortune in legal fees fighing it.

Proceed with caution.

If you buy a new Pixel and then run an alt rom like graphene or lineage, you're most likeley costing Google money. I believe they manufacture the Pixel at a small loss because they expect to make their money back harvesting and selling your personal data. Denying them that should mean you get decent hardware at a fair price, without really "supporting" Google as much as you fear. I could be wrong, but I've definitely seen that mentioned before.

I still prefer 'Xitter'

I don't see much love for Debian Stable + KDE in this thread, but that's what I installed for my wife and she absolutely loves it. Don't underestimate the power of a "boring" but rock solid foundation specifically designed not to break. Users new to Linux migrating away from Windows often really appreciate that.

qBitTorrent

that's a fair point I hadn't really considered. it's a kinda dumb reason to roll dual wifi hardware and I'd hate to give up one of only two usb ports, but that would technically solve my complaint. def worth considering!

I used to make clocks with the platters and give them to friends and family. Michael's used to sell inexpensive clock mechanisms that looked really cool against the platter background. I haven't seen them lately, but I'm sure someone sells them online.

Something cool & useful? htop. Something cool but useless? cmatrix

There are also various text-based screensavers like the windows pipes and such, but I don't have those project names handy.

Barrier: https://github.com/debauchee/barrier

Edit: Input Leap looks like a promising KVM replacement for Barrier, thanks for sharing!

Jitsi Meet is a good foss choice for video conferencing in general, and includes a decent screen sharing function. You can try it out on the free to use (8x8 hosted, I think?) instance at https://meet.jit.si/

Heads up: that partocular instance now requires the host to be logged in to either a Google or Gihub account first, raising privacy concerns. that's just how that instance is configured tho, to avoid abuse. it's also self hostable and there should be other free instances available if you search for them.

edit: just noticed a few already mentioned this one (sorry, i must have scanned too quickly). fyi, Jitsi works well in combo with OBS virtual camera, allowing very precise control over exactly what audio and video you're streaming

I'm seeing a growing trend where a dev's core repo moves to a new platform, but leaves a mirror on github with a link to the main repo. I love this solution.

You might try ZeroTier. You'll each need a tiny client app, but its super easy to install and setup, and extremely secure. Free to use with up to 25 devices.

+1 for Cloudflare.

That said, there are a number of folks rightfully concerned about the sheer mass of information Cliudflare has access to through their Content Delivery Network (their primary service). This raises potential privacy concerns, especially for self-hosters, who tend to prefer not to rely too heavily on any one large company. However, you don't actually have to use their CDN service to make use of their minimally-priced Registrar functionality, and personally I really appreciate the services they offer. Their free tier is really impressive, and incredibly useful.

I've heard Bazzite mentioned repeatedly as a popular distro for Linux gaming (and I plan to test drive it on my old laptop soneday when I get around to it). My understanding is that it's a standalone distro you can run locally, same as Debian/Arch/Ubuntu/etc. I suspect the "cloud native" marketing term in this context just means you can run the same image file in a vm, vps, bare metal, whatever.

If I'm dead wrong, hopefully my reply will be sufficiently inflammatory to trigger a correction, lol.