Ark-5

Yeah, I’ve largely figured out how to change all these settings from configs for myself, just always on the lookout for a nice gui. I’m slowly working to make a Linux experience I can install for my relatives that makes the transition from crapware Windows relatively painless.

Ah, so being on Hyprland means I can’t really gain access to this, right?

I’m using Wayland, where do I find this settings gui?

Another Fastmail user. I’m happy with it. The unlimited alias and masked emails are nice. From what I can tell I’ve only ever gotten emails from things I have directly and explicitly given my info to, so I’m assuming my email address isn’t being sold around resulting in lots of spam.

Yes absolutely. Back in the day I used Hamachi for Minecraft servers, now I run a server with offline mode enabled through Tailscale with zero fear of anyone but my friends accessing it.

A fellow Rust enjoyer I see.

vtop is nice too since it still is very readable in small windows.

Okay, lots of other comments I didn’t read, and this might have been mentioned.

👏Syncthing👏

You mentioned OneDrive. I also jumped around storage solutions as I explored the FOSS world, and nothing hold a candle to Syncthing (in my opinion, but I want/need to try nextCloud). I won’t drone on about it, but if you’re looking to ditch another big data company that’s probably scraping your files, check out Syncthing

To be totally honest I didn’t look through everything you posted, but I’ve toyed with the idea of intranets myself and have come up with a handful of tools I really like.

• Tailscale can be used when there is a necessity to connect remote locations over “The Internet”. It is a private VPN that provides ip addresses for connected devices that are only usable to other devices within your Tailnet
• Syncthing can be spun up very quickly to distribute and sync files across devices on the local network, within your Tailnet, and yes over “The Internet” if need be. This is not full on web server level of hosting, but it can get some things off the ground quickly.

The way I’ve used this to make an “Intranet” is outlined here. I use Obsidian for a lot of note taking, link storage, and general information gathering and navigating. Obsidian stores all it’s files as plain text in a normal folder structure, but this could also be done with htlm files and a normal browser. I can target any portion of these folders with Syncthing and keep them updated across all my devices through my Tailnet. The broader usage of this begins to get into the idea of an intranet.

Let’s say I meet someone within this community, or maybe from one of the other locations. We get to talking and decide to exchange information from our respective collections. I fire up an ad hoc WiFi network off of say my phone, or a small portable router, add them to my Tailnet, which could even be optional given Syncthing’s built in encryption, add their devices Syncthing ID to the folder I want to share with them. They download a local copy of whatever data I want, and then can return to a hub of their own, maybe a home network, or a larger community wide network. Target the new data they have acquired, and sync it to the hub. We could then remove each other from our Tailnets and Syncthing instances, or leave them so we can automatically update differences when in proximity.

That’s a rough idea of how I think this system could be used for a more “personal” internet. One that focuses more on direct and intentional communication and data storage, where each user or group of users is basically selecting which data they value enough to commit drive space to. I have also researched medium and long range “WiFi” networks using radio or other signals to trickle sync nodes over longer distances. I’ve even been inspired by Factorio’s logistic drone networks and thought to attach portable routers, single board computers, and storage drives to drones or even solar gliders that can trickle sync to nodes they pass over.

Just some ideas that don’t quite fit the different systems you mentioned, but I think are a bit easier to spin up for individual users, and could decentralize the load of what you are trying to do even more. Could maybe post this in some of the other FOSS/networking/linux/privacy communities, but I’d maybe clean up the post a bit and make it clearer what you are after.

Thanks so much!! Seems like a cool service. Reminds me of popcorn time, which I don’t think works anymore. Are you still routing all your traffic through a VPN when using that? Seems like a privacy nightmare should any action be taken against those companies.

Could you elaborate? I looked up both services and it seems to just be a media front end and a downloading tool. How does that get you the actual files to watch.