For those that don't want to go back to the Dark side (Reddit), the post referenced a theme (Grey Layout global theme) which got KDE Dev's involved who in reaction removed the listing from the store.

In short - the theme ran code to run a rm -rf on the user's drive which wiped everything during install. Aside from backing up your data religiously, be sure to inspect the code instead of blindly installing for now. KDE Dev's said they will need to do better so I expect some changes are afoot to provide better security.

In no particular order, the most essential ones are those I constantly use throughout my day and also weekly.

Proxmox holds all of these in different LXC's and VM's

• Home Assistant
• Pocket-ID - https://github.com/stonith404/pocket-id (Exclusive Passkey login system as in -no un/pw just your Passkey which - doubles as an OIDC provider)
• Homepage (By Ben Phelps of gethomepage.dev)
• Vaultwarden
• TechnitiumDNS which handles all of my DHCP and Adblocking in a one system, extremely capable software especially useful for SOHO too.
• Baserow - Airtable alternative. It holds certain items of importance like what MAC address each device in my home network holds and what IP It uses in an intelligent view. I also was using it for a while to log issues with my sleep where I deal with insomnia, so I logged how well I slept, how many times I woke up, how long it took me to fall asleep etc. That was a simple form I created using drag/drop in Baserow and called by a URL.
• OpenVSCode server - makes editing my Homepage (above) yaml and my docker-compose files a breeze! It's especially nice when you edit it something and it auto saves almost instantly. Makes some of my services change in real-time!
• UptimeKuma - Simply one of the best out there for me
• Gotify - I get alerted to my Tuya based dehumidifer tank being full via Home Assistant, Downtime alerts from UptimeKuma and a variety of other services which I deem higher priority alerts over "fix when you can" ones.

Aside from that, i do have other services I use every so often like Memos, Joplin Server (holds most of my notes), Pingvin and a few others.

Not related to the server, but I was very happily surprised with the latest Roku Jellyfin channel. A complete refresh of everything and it's great to see it.

I've always felt that we are like clumsy giants to them lumbering on throughout the home with the great strength and dexterity to manipulate objects. In spite of all of this they can swing from loving you to down right cold shoulders on a whim!

My obligatory cat tax. :)

Homebox - before we relocate - whenever that is, I will be printing labels and putting them under and behind my stuff, scanning it into there and then will use that to keep track of our items after the move to know what is in which box etc.

NocoDB Self Hosted (I use this for a few things) - started out with my network ip's I have on my servers and ports for my containers and most recently a sleep log.

Just a couple there.

Let me preface this with that I am an experienced CLI user and with Docker, so this really is not in my interest generally, but getting older and dealing with a variety of other personal issues, having a nice dashboard to deploy things sometimes is just really nice ya know? So I figured I would put on my dusty beginner's hat to get this a run.

For the beginner, it's a nice system to get started and get your feet wet with a no-nonsense app install experience. I tested this in a VM on my desktop and installed Sonarr and Sabnzbd which if you use Docker with these, you know the proper volume mapping is key. They take the hassle out of doing this for the end user. With that said though - file permissions are a bit off and both Sonarr and Sabnzbd needed the proper permissions set for the folders. Not a deal breaker for someone accustomed to the CLI, but for a new self hoster, this can be a bit frustrating.

Their app store is pretty impressive and I guess growing, the install on the server was painless to get running. It's something to keep an eye on, it's in good company with the other ones like Umbel and CasaOS, each has their own qualities.

For those wanting more fine grained control over the apps and installs, Tipi is a bit more opinionated to the port numbers and paths used and you can't easily modify those (at least from what I could tell). In the long run, this is a non issue for the most part if you are starting on a freshly installed server and don't want to handle the challenges of proper path mapping, reverse proxying and so forth. (They include Traefik in the install). Not having to worry if port 3000 is already taken or 8080 is, you can trust that it will handle it and it does!

I have a TCL ROKU TV which is way too chatty on my network. It sends every single keypress on the remote to their servers (just look into the dev console which is easy enough to see what is logged). I have an adblock dns server on my network

These are just in the last 23 minutes of the hour. As I understand, it's not always doing this if they are not blocked, but when you block them, it starts to panic!

The advantage of doing this is instead of having the ad on the right side of the home menu, I have a nice translucent adbox with nothing in it.. Also, if you look up the secret codes for Roku menus, you can also toggle the ad server they use so sometimes if some slip through, you get some in house tested ones which are sometimes funny. But that's extremely rare for us.

Our next TV will probably be a display or offline only and be a streaming box with custom firmware such as Librelec or something else when the time comes.

I'm happy to finally be able to re-arrange my dashboard. Not drag and drop, but it's a good start. I am guessing the numbering is now top to bottom so 1 top left, 2 below, 3 below that and so forth, but it doesn't on mine at least. I have 1 top left, 2 below, 7 below that, 3 next to 1 and so forth. But at least, I know where I can target my placement now. :)

Under Proxmox, I have the following running currently:

**As LXC Containers: **

• AdguardHome
• Psono Password Manager
• Zitadel SSO and
• One I'm trying to get Pomerium installed on

As a VM

• Home Assistant

The rest is all docker on the host OS which is Debian 12, this is not my complete list but the most used ones in my world:

• Dozzle (great docker log viewer)
• Uptime Kuma
• Authentik configured to allow passkey login (Simply awesome!)
• IT-Tools - https://it-tools.tech/
• Homepage by Ben Phelps
• WyzeCamBridge (So I can have RTSP for Home Assistant)
• SterlingPDF (MultiTool for PDFS)
• sshwifty - SSH within your browser - your logins are locally stored in your session only. https://github.com/nirui/sshwifty
• Portainer
• Vaultwarden

Protected by Authentik's SSO

• Portainer
• Statping
• Proxmox
• Wordpress (I'm evaulating this for a suitable Joplin replacement ) In short - I found that it's easier to reference a site instead of installing Joplin when I rebuild my computer.
• Psono password manager

You may wonder why I am using Zitadel and Authentik, I first started with Zitadel, and moved to Authentik, but am evaluating both. They both have their positives. So far Authentik has been the most useful for me. And about the two password managers, I use Vaultwarden as it supports everything I need including Passkey support. My step daughter who is an adult is disabled so having an easier password like Psono makes it easier for her.

I came pretty close to death I think - I was home recovering from a surgery and woke up early in the morning, short of breath, my heart was racing, and literally felt like it stopped. Naturally, at that time, my bladder decided it need to be relieved so I stumbled breathlessly into the restroom and did my thing. When I stood up, started to lose my hearing and vision for a few seconds, and felt myself starting to collapse, but I managed to catch myself and things restored, I face planted on my bed which got my wife's attention and 911 was called. All of this was due to a massive pulmonary embolism choking my heart I later learned. The embolism was caused by a clot which traveled up my leg.

Lesson learned: Keep moving after recovering from surgery at home kids! Your life depends on it.

For those like me which didn't see the video linked it's the Threads by Linked in the OP is talking about.

Be careful for those that install it, I guess if you delete your account there, it deletes your Instagram one too.
https://www.androidauthority.com/delete-threads-profile-3342840/

Some examples of using Tasker:

• When a specific contact sends a text message, it alerts me using TTS so I can be aware they are trying to reach me. I have an older family member she lives closer to, so having an alert from her is important if anything should happen forbid it does. When I plug my phone in to charge, it auto silences the phone and keeps it silenced until I unplug it, built into the same task, if monitors for phone calls from my contact and a few others and overrides it.

When a specific phone contact or contact calls, it raises the volumes to max. This is useful if you went to an appointment, set your phone on silent or vibrate but forgot to reset it. After the call has been completed, it returns the phone to the original volume you set.

• When I scan a NFC Tag, i have it send a webhook to my August lock to unlock it. As an apartment dweller, if I go down to the car to unload groceries, the door by default auto locks. This means I have to pull the phone out, unlock it, open the August App, and then tell it to unlock the door and sometimes use the biometric to do so. Having the NFC tag do this means I can put it in my wallet and when I put my phone in the same pocket where the wallet it is, it triggers the door.

• When connected to my computer only, it keeps the screen on all the time.

• When I launch certain apps, it keeps the screen on until the app is closed. Very useful when you are at the grocery store working within a strict budget and want to see how much you have put in to the cart!

• I have a widget on my screen which toggles my Private DNS on/off. This allows me to disable the adblock dns I use if I encounter a public wifi which insists I disable it. (I usually stay away from those, and use my mobile data, but sometimes it's unavoidable when there is so much interference your 5G goes to NONE and you have to be there for a while.)

• Likewise, I have a widget which toggles my Tailscale connection on/off which comes in handy as well. Again, if the Wifi spot rejects custom DNS's and I'm in the scenario above.

• If you have a Google Account (Sadly, this is the only way). You can view the list of profiles/tasks which other people have built. It's a growing list. https://taskernet.com/shares/

• Using third party software such as Wake on LAN, when I come home and connect to my WiFi, it wakes my computer. (Or really any condition I set to trigger it).

I will say that the dev is very responsive and active in releasing updates and new features.

With that said, it has a slight learning curve which he(the developer) is working on to help simplify things and modernize it more. Since taking over the project from the previous owner, it's really grown.

I admit though, I used to have a lot more tasks and profiles, but it seems that Android is starting to bake those functions in so it's not as used on my end. But don't let it it sway you. Your imagination is the only limit with what you can do with Tasker.

Generally, for less than a cup of coffee, it's worth the purchase price. :)

The thing about Tuya devices is they are a white label provider which allows manufacturers to brand the Tuya Device as their own. This is causing a massive saturation in markets such as Amazon where the lower price is king. I had some Costco 'Feit" branded bulbs which turned out to set up on Tuya so it's not just Amazon or Costco, other companies do it as well. I have a WiFi dehumidifier I bought before I got into the home automation scene which is Tuya based. They often masquerade behind apps such as SmartLife, Uhome or Feit and others with their GUI using nothing more than API Calls to the Tuya servers in China.

You can still obtain the local product keys on Tuya Developer portal which allows you to locally control your devices without the cloud, but they are making that harder to find. i was able to track some down about a month ago on a device I was evaluating. You can use other plugins too which decouple it from the cloud with your local key such as Xtended-Tuya, Tuya-Local and the like in Home Assistant so you can technically ignore the comms to China and I've found that some of those in tandem with each other have unlocked some extra features that the Tuya app never reveals for the device.

Ultimately, they are a very cost effective device to install in your home and often times you don't know it's Tuya Based until you poke around. I'm not defending them in any way, rather I am stating my observations and thoughts as to why it's so pervasive. I wouldn't be surprised if some Ovens or refrigerators were linked in some way to them as well.

Not sure if I am the only one, but ever since the pandemic, even if I step outside to get the mail up about 500' away , I just have to wash my hands immediately when I come in. Go to the store? I just feel really gross after. It's surreal. I guess I've become a bit OCD as a result.

Pocket id is my go to. I used to use Authentik, but it was overkill for us. Pocket ID is pretty simple to use and has a very nice interface to add your users and clients. Uncluttered and straight and to the point. Pocket ID doesn't use UN/PW Combos. Instead, you use Passkeys as in webAuthn devices to log in, which IMHO is one of the better security paths.

https://github.com/pocket-id/pocket-id

As other's have said Brother. I can honestly say they are one of the few companies which still make Linux drivers for their printers. I've been using their monochrome lasers.

They are workhorses as well, I've seen several out in the field printing well over 100K pages and still going strong. The best part about Brother I think is they also allow free access to their service manuals which will tell you more than you may ever want to know about your Brother Printer. :) I had an older HL-L2240 (USB Only) I bought about 9 years ago in a thrift shop and it ran faithfully on a network print server at my home until it stopped feeding paper. It probably needed a new pick up roller set, but it was a bit slow and I felt it was time to upgrade, so I now have a Hl_L2420_DW wireless which out of the box on my Fedora linux system installed and runs flawlessly. They are generally under $200 (around $130 at Wal-Mart for example).

They also do not limit you on your laser cartridge if you go that route, in that you can usually buy after market toner and drums without it ever complaining or locking you out.

If hardware service counts. :) I have been fighting for the last few months with my Promxox server telling me a drive went read only , from a SSD and even a HDD, very odd behavior and it finally pulled the last straw with me last Thursday. I had a 4TB drive acting as my Storage/backup drive which this complained about so I put a 1TB drive in which is pretty much 2 yrs old so plenty of life on it.

I went through and tested the SSD with extended tests and it passed with flying colors, so it dawned on me, maybe it's the SATA data cable, and sure enough, it was. When I had run the sudo smartctl -x -T permissive /dev/sdb it only presented very little information on it, swapping the cable and it now presents the full SMART data and stats as it should. Additionally, it's been more stable with the performance so far. So I call that a win.

In the software side, I have been going through the Home Assistant instance and removing dead/old entities I never had gotten to removing

Great job on the cabling and the setup! As an Apartment dweller, I hope you don't mind my living vicariously through your setup!

I have a policy - only those who should know my phone number is family and they are very strict about asking me before giving to anyone who asks. So, it's usually not given. Then for businesses and other places which require a phone number, I use a Google Voice number. From doctors, to banks, or other places. I rarely get the scam calls.

HOWEVER

I get around 6-15 SPAM text messages daily. All 100% Political for Trump, Biden, Harris, or whatever scammer tries to get me to support on my non-shared number. A lot try to guilt you into "donating" to them too! I feel bad because while I won't fall for it, I know many people already do. I have to use Google Messages to effectively block those automatically.

I have AT & T and complained to them about it to be told that I could change my number, but it would be $40.00 to do so. That's a big scam in itself and I refused.

I use Purelymail for my primary domain's smtp and imap server. As long as you don't use it for nefarious purposes like automated emails, then you should be fine. My primary use is to hook it into my services such as Vaultwarden, my uptime monitors (Uptime Kuma and StatPing) and Watchtower, so maybe less than 100 per month on it. They don't seem to mind. They have great support via Discord and it's been close to 1.5 years I think that I've been with them, no downtime.

https://purelymail.com/