wltr

Haven’t used one myself for years (close to a decade). Installed it for a relative about 5 years ago, never maintained it ever since.

What’s wrong with it?

It worked pretty well on an ancient PC which was running some Windows 7 if not XP. Can’t remember really. The relative is about 80 years old, so all he needs is a browser. So, Chrome OS came naturally. The hardest part was, for some really stupid reason Google wants Google account password to be entered upon booting, and not some other password. PIN code didn’t work for us for some reason. The solution I took is we changed the password to his birthday (perhaps with some A letter, if it wants at least one letter to be present). The password included dots, which was trivial to enter with a Numpad. Like A1945.09.05. But personally, I just hate it. There are use cases when you can allow a computer to have no password. Here, Google forced us to use less secure password, out of convenience. I’d prefer to have my Google account having stronger password, and forcing no password of my computer at all. The potential security risk is someone breaking into the house, and surely they’ll be very dumb to steal that computer, to have … what? YouTube history of some old fart? But that’s a bit of a different story anyway.

Me, I’d rather go with some very minimal distro and maybe even kiosk-mode browser, if necessary.

Still, what’s wrong with ChromeOS? Did I miss something important? Beyond Google dropping ‘don’t be evil’ obviously.

Honestly, I don’t understand whether there’s anyone who doesn’t need normal codecs. I hate this part of Fedora, as I always need to remember to install these codecs.

Take a look at the immutable distros like Fedora Silverblue. It would install updates automatically, and has the ability to always rollback to a working version. I haven’t used it long enough to have version upgrades tested. Perhaps it asks for user input. These upgrades happen twice a year.

If I was doing that these days with my current skills, I’d install some minimal version of Arch Linux and probably would remote into it once in a while to update, or invent some simple script to do the updates unattended. The lesser the packages the easier the whole task.

Also, don’t forget there’s Chrome OS which you can install on a regular PC. (It was called Chrome OS Flex last time I did that for a relative.) It’s the easiest I can remember right now. That’s for situations when all they need is actually just a browser. For those cases Chrome OS shines.

North American English, innit?

If you don’t setup or activate exit node, no traffic is routed through any of your nodes. All you have is the access to the nodes. Which is what you need. I tested exit nodes only recently, they’re very easy to setup as well, but I found no practical need for my use case.

I think installing and logging in should be trivial remotely. Like hey mum, install this app, and log in (trivial with Google or Apple accounts). The rest is on you. Just test the waters yourself first, you’ll get the idea, it’s pretty straightforward. Even if it’s not what you’re looking for, you’d have more information and skills to move to the next thing.

I’d suggest you to investigate either Tailscale or similar solutions. I’m using Tailscale, and it’s really easy to set up. It can automatically connect to the VPN when you access their resource, and the internet works as well. So technically, they can be connected all the time. That’s much safer than the alternative of just opening a port, and dealing with things like CGNAT.

The alternatives to Tailscale I know about are Headscale (which you need self-hosting), Netbird, WireGuard. At least, but there are more.

And search for tunnels as well. You could utilise Cloudflare Tunnel, but I wouldn’t go that way.

I’d suggest testing waters with Tailscale as it’s the easiest, and tweak from there. They have a YouTube channel which helps at starting, I found it just recently. (I use them for a year or two now.)

Now they have. The point is, if you trust that company for whatever reason, it’s your problem. What makes you believe they’re to be trusted? That they changed? There’s nothing that indicates that, yet people keep not just using their unprofessional incompetent code glued stack, they pay money for it.

Coming from a background where software is usually pirated and not paid for (which I don’t support now), it’s a special kind of weird to pay for that shite. I mean, who could have guessed? Me personally, I have no empathy for those. Go buy the next license from Microsoft, I guess. Till they screw you again.

If you pay for something, pay for quality. I understand people who buy Apple stuff, it’s not even overpriced when you consider all the factors. Windows people are fooling themselves, and it’s really fun to watch. ‘Idiots’ is the right word in my book. So I vibe with the title, it’s more correct than the Verge’s one.

As if Microsoft was founded just yesterday and wasn’t scamming everyone at everything for like decades, right?

I keep repeating this for a decade. Buy a used old iPhone (like SE) and get a no fancy phone which is mostly fine for that use case.

For some reason, mobile FF is so bad on iOS, I keep it only to send links to my desktop or laptop.

Mobile Firefox has uBlock too, at least on Android.

While I have no respect for Windows people, it’s interesting to read through their failures. Yeah, do Windows instead of spending bits of your time to make an effort at learning something new.

I mean it, in a non-sarcastic way. You can start with Windows, and if you won’t give up on this hobby, I bet you’d come to some open source system instead at some point. After all, the entire self-hosting point is not in ditching Windows, but ditching proprietary thing corporations lure people to use, to farm their data and money too. And attention, not the least thing. It’s just that Windows is precisely the very thing a self-hoster would despise.

Having one to boot into ‘launch that game’ mode makes sense to some, but running it to run some services 24/7, makes little sense, if at all.

All you need is a lack of comma, huh!

My SSDs are like ten to 15 years old, none are dead at this point. The cargo cult of swap files trashing everything.

Thanks for that, I wasn’t sure about the 2018 model. Why solder the SSD? And unsolder already soldered (in the previous generation) RAM?

Anyway, how’s the mini with Linux as a server for you? Is it good? I thought of getting one and put it into sleep for idling and perhaps waking it up upon access.

Well, or cheaper in some regions. Considering the RPi is sold with an extra fee in many places, while Mac mini is just an old outdated piece of hardware that cannot run its native OS any more. Unless you don’t care and use the outdated version. Most people with Macs have no idea Linux exists, and perhaps they aren’t aware Windows can be installed on those.

Thank you for taking time for a detailed review!

I’m not having an Apple Silicon machine at the moment, but I’m eyeing one. Mostly to use Linux. I’m not in real need here (still running an Intel model with Linux, which is plenty for me right now, including okayish battery life). But I think of getting one to play around either this year, or early next year. Initially I thought of waiting for M1 models to be phased out of the macOS support and get one then. Which would make them an ideal Linux laptop in my book, as the price would drop significantly, while providing outstanding value. But I think I’d get at least one earlier.

And saves battery, don’t forget.

A good thing in my book. Intel models are getting cheaper now. (Me eyeing a Mac mini, or a couple even.)