Is there a specific android app you need?
https://gitlab.com/android_translation_layer/android_translation_layer/
And of course waydroid. Both these solutions let you run android app on Linux, but like wine, they won’t work for every app.
Waydroid probably works for all apps not dependent on google though. But it’s more difficult to set up than the android translation layer.
Wish I could transcend into declarativity but the thread’s nix survivor ratio is grim
Yeah lol.
I will say, that for my server, I decided to use kubernetes + fluxcd for declaratively. My entire kubernetes “state” is declared in a git repo, and this is the popular, industry standard for things like this, called GitOps. It makes it very easy to add an app, since it’s just adding a folder + some new config files. And unlike Nix, Kubernetes and Flux are very well documented with much tooling as well. Nix doesn’t really have a working LSP or good code autocomplete, but with kubernetes, I can just start typing in a yaml file and then hit tab and it spits out the template for me. Code autocompletion with kubernetes feels much more similar to the tooling of other, more mature tooling
It’s not as declarative as nix though. There are things missing, like OCI containers could theoretically shift if you don’t rely on hashes and some other nitpicks. But declarativity is a spectrum, and I feel like, outside of scientific scenarios (think simulations where versioning, hardware, runtime etc being the same is very important), I think many non-nixos solutions are declarative enough.
Advice online seemed like i needed to basically create a nix flake for the app. I still havent gotten it installed because i have no idea what nix flakes are.
So, the problem is that flakes are technically an “experimental” feature, and thus are not allowed to be included as a primary solution in the official documentation. But, basically everybody uses flakes, so it leads to this crazy documentation split, and is a big part of why documentation on Nix is so part.
Some stuff can only be done with flakes, some stuff only with non-flakes and you have to figure out which is which on your own, while also dealing with the poor documentation for either.
The advice you received was wrong. You could also use a combination of a default.nix file and a shell.nix file to create a package and development environment for your app. But, the documentation is so poor that it’s unlikely you will learn this, and figuring out how to do this on your own, is again, a massive time sink.
So, I use Arch, but I don’t use the AUR at all. Instead, I use nixpkgs to get stuff (admittedly only like 3 packages) not in the Arch repos.
The main reason for this is the quality of AUR packages. Although I don’t really fear a malicious package, I do remember hearing about a package that moved a users /bin to /opt during the install phase.
Something like that is literally impossible with Nix, due to the way that applications aren’t really installed to the system. But, nixpkgs also requires some level of vetting the package quality, which is also nice.
I also use nix for managing all my development environments. For example, my blog github repo, has a few nix files at it’s root, and you should just be able to type nix-shell in folder, and then you will get an identical environment to me.
declarative rollbackable immutability sounds really freakin’ AWESOME
I have BTRFS snapshots set up, and with grub-btrfs, I can even boot from them and revert to an older kernel (my /boot is stored on BTRFS).
However, I have given up on NixOS, for many reasons. The documentation is very poor, and it’s more complexity than it’s worth, to make my whole OS reproducible, rather than just my development environments. In addition to that, their are also issues with running certain apps that expect to see a normal FIlesystem Hierarchy, which nix does not provide. Although you can work around this with stuff like steam-run or creating a fake FHS using nix, I would rather not play that game.
But, considering I installed some stuff in an Ubuntu 22 distrobox recently, because that was what VScode and Unity official provide repos for, maybe this doesn’t really matter. You can probably use distrobox on Nixos, but I’ve seen issues about GPU acceleration with distrobox (and other non-nix apps) as well.
EDIT: I lied, I use the chaotic aur for some things.
Yes. Firstly, it’s about release cycles. Centos Stream is a rolling release distro (although it rolls very, very slowly). But what this means, is that there isn’t a true guarantee of application/ABI/API compatibility between current versions of Centos Stream and future versions.
In constrast to this, Centos 8 and previous were complete clones of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, which was a stable release distro. During the 10 year lifecycle of each RHEL release, there was a guarantee certain application/ABI/API compatibility not changing, which is what stability in the Linux/software world is defined as.
Centos 8 was a free alternative, for institutions unwilling, or unable to pay for RHEL stable releases. But, with the death of Centos, an alternative was needed. Alma Linux, Rocky Linux, and Scientific Linux (designed for labs and universities), were rebuilds of RHEL. This meant that, they would take RHEL’s open source code, and recompile it and distribute it in a way that guaranteed application/ABI/API compatibility with RHEL, for the same lifecycle of a RHEL release.
So Alma Linux and Rocky Linux fill that gap… but recently, RHEL said that they are adjusting policies to make it much harder for people to make rebuilds (likely targeting Oracle Linux, which is a RHEL rebuild), but this change may affect Alma and Rocky as well.
Rocky said they were going to keep bug-for-bug compatibility, like they used to, but Alma says they are going to do something different. Although they still intend to be ABI compatible, Alma has decided to make some changes to the base system, such as reimplimenting and continuing to support things that Red Hat saw unfit to continue existing in RHEL. One example of this is SPICE, which is a graphics protocol used for low latency display of virtual machines. It had many usecases, and I am very excited to see it back in a distro in the Red Hat ecosystem.
https://help.kagi.com/orion/faq/faq.html#oss
We’re working on it! We’ve started with some of our components and intend to open more in the future.
The idea that “open-source = trustworthy” only goes so far. For example, the same tech company that offers a popular open-source browser also has the largest ad/tracking network in history, with that browser playing a significant role in it. Another company with a closed-source browser (using WebKit like Orion) is on the forefront of privacy awareness and technologies in its products.
So, does anyone here remember when all chromium browsers had a secret api that sent extra data to google? Brave, Opera, and Edge got hit by this one, but I think Vivaldi dodged it. They all removed this after they found out, but still…
When it comes to things like browsers, due to the sheer complexity and difficulty to truly audit chromium, I don’t really consider chromium to be “open source” in the same sense as many other apps. Legally, you can see and edit the code. But in practice, it’s impossible to audit all of it, and the development is controlled by a single corporation who puts secrets in it, or removes features that harm their interests (manifest v3). Personally, I consider Minecraft Java to be closer to open source than chromium is.
To say that:
The idea that “open-source = trustworthy” only goes so far
is really just a cop-out and excuse for not being transparent with their code and what they are doing.
I honestly don’t know how this could turn out.
It could be an amazing change that results in much more progress for hardware acceleration on guests of various types (since that is what vmware is good at) in kvm…
Or it could mean that they are dropping that feature from vmware altogether.
Regardless, I like this change because it means I would be able to run vmware machines and libvirt kvm machines at the same time, at least when I am forced to use vmware workstation.
I also dislike proprietary software in general, so I think less proprietary software and more FOSS is a good thing.
I found this: https://github.com/tenclass/mvisor-win-vgpu-driver
But it is for another foss kvm based hypervisor called mvisor.
I disagree, because they are not the same thing.
Immutable means read only root.
Atomic means that updates are done in a snapshotted manner somehow. It usually means that if an update fails, your system is not in a half working state, but instead will be reverted to the last working state, and that updates are all or nothing.
I create a btrfs snapshot before updates on my Arch Linux system. This is atomic, but not immutable.*
There is also “image based” which distros like ublue (immutable, atomic) are, but Nixos (also immutable and atomic) are not.
*only really before big updates tbh, but I know some people do configure snapshits before all updates.
Is it possible to allow DRM content for just 1 website ( Netflix ) , while other websites on the same browsers are not allowed to do it?
I would use multiple firefox profiles for this. If you go to about:profiles or use the command firefox -P to launch firefox, you can view and create other firefox profiles. Each firefox profile is essentially it’s own instance of firefox, complete with different history, extensions, and setting. You could have a “Netflix” profile and a regular browsing profile.
As an alternative suggestion, consider using a linux laptop with a drawing tablet.
I use a wacom intuos s with bluetooth to takes notes on xournal++, although rnote should work as well.
Not infinite ram. I’d say double ram, plus there is a noticable, but quick delay when switching to an application that was compressed by ram. But it’s much, much faster than switching to an app that was swapped to disk.
Cachyos (arch based distro) does this hy default.
Winlator is really just termux + proot + box64 + wine wrapped in a neat UI (+ controller support). You can, and people have set this up manually before winlator came along. You’ll either need termux-x11 or vnc for the GUI.
Mobox is a similar project that does this automatically via a script… but I don’t see a license in their github repo, plus they require the proprietary input bridge for touch controls.
Termux recently got moved off of the play store (kinda), and is now only available on f-droid/github, because Google was further locking down what they allowed on their store.
And in addition to that, they recently added a restriction in later versions of Android: “Child process limit”. Although this limit used to not there, when enabled, it prevents users from truly running arbitrary linux programs, like via termux.
Although the child process limit can still be disabled in developer options, it doesn’t bode well for how flexible base android in the future will be, since many times corpos like Google move stuff into the “secret” options before eventually removing that dial all together.
TLDR: Termux has been, and is a thing… for now.
Also, I want to shout out winlator. It uses a linux proot, similator to termux, and has box64 and wine inside that proot that people can use to play games. I tested with Gungeon, and it even has controller support and performance, which is really impressive.
So I don’t know how much you know about the shell, but the way that the linux command line works is that there are a set of variables, called environment variables, which dictate so me behavior of the shell. For example, $PATH variable, refers to what directories to search through, when you try to execute a program in your shell.
The documentation you linked, wants you to create a custom shell variable, called SCALE_PATH, consisting of a folder path, which contains the compiled binaries/programs of scale you want to run.
This command: export PATH="${SCALE_PATH}/bin:$PATH"
temporarily edits your PATH variable to add that folder with the scale programs you want to run to your path, enabling you to execute them from your shell.
Thorium’s entire focus is on performance. As another commenter has noted, that means no security updates, and no privacy features.
I wouldn’t recommend it for daily use, but if you are playing a browser based game it’s worth testing out. I used to play krunker.io and I tested it to see if I could get more FPS (FPS equaled faster movement speed back then), but I didn’t see any major performance improvements over the major krunker clients or Microsoft Edge (other most performant browser).
I cannot find anything related to that in their documentation, their about page, or their whitepaper.
They talk a lot about decentralized computing, but any form of secure enclave or code verification isn’t mentioned.
Compare that to this project, which is similar, but incomplete. However, quilibrium uses it’s own language instead of python or javascript, like golem does. The docs for golem do not explain how I am supposed to verify a remote server is actually running my python/javascript code.
I read through the docs. I’m not sure how this enables trusted computing.
There is concern amongst critics that it will not always be possible to examine the hardware components on which Trusted Computing relies, the Trusted Platform Module, which is the ultimate hardware system where the core ‘root’ of trust in the platform has to reside.[10] If not implemented correctly, it presents a security risk to overall platform integrity and protected data
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trusted_Computing
Literally all TPM’s are proprietary. It’s basically a permanent, unauditable backdoor, that has had numerous issues, like this one (software), or this one (hardware).
We should move away from them, and other proprietary backdoors that deny users control over there own system, rather than towards them, and instead design apps that don’t need to trust the server, like end to end encryption.
Also: if software is APGL then they are legally required to give you the source code, behind the server software. Of course, they could just lie, but the problem of ensuring that a server runs certain software also has a legal solution.
Some software is so complex and difficult that Debian does not maintain it on their own, and instead follows the upstream release cycle.
Browsers are one such example, and as you’ve discovered for me, Thunderbird is probably another.
Also, please do not recommend testing for daily usage. It does not receive critical security updates in a timely manner, including for things that would effect desktop users. Use stable, Sid, or another distro. Testing is for testing Debian ONLY, and by using Debian Testing, you are losing the advantage of immediate security fixes that come from literally any other distro.