Mostly because the devs are assholes that are throwing instance admins anf users under the bus by refusing to work on moderation tools and data privacy law related issues.
It’s also great for sharing files with friends/family. I gave a couple of friends a folder address, and we all just drop shit in there that we want the others to see.
Try it out. It’s free. Install it on a PC or phone, set up a shared folder. Put something in it. Set up syncthing on another phone/computer and use the same folder name. The program takes care of all the network stuff.
And so many other things. I’ve also used it for “cloud saves” back/forth from my desktop to my steam deck on games that don’t support them for various reasons. Dyson Sphere Program being one, because the files can get quite large.
The funny thing is that when Chrome was first released, I was pretty excited that open source web engines were becoming more widely adopted.
Whatever one thinks of the current dominance of Chrome, I vastly prefer it to the time when Internet Explorer 6 had >90% market share. Open standards and FOSS technologies really are a winning cause even if the end products aren’t always FOSS.
Recently installed Linux (Nobara to be specific) and I’m amazed this isn’t talked about more. It’s so useful! Windows is seriously missing out not having a program like this built in.
It does, it’s called “your phone”. In my experience it works more reliably as it uses the cloud, though you still need local WiFi for some reason, it also has screen mirroring, which KDE lacks. However, testy privacy and lacks a bunch of handy tools which KDE connect has
A quick search comes up with “Phone Link” which only seems to work with Windows on the “PC” end, whereas KDE Connect will work everywhere that KDE works, which includes Windows.
Yes I think that’s what they’re calling it now. They used to call it something else. But it generally works everywhere windows works. Though I don’t have very many windows machines myself and much prefer KDE connect. But there is something similar. Apple has one too. But it strictly only works with iPhones.
Yes, I just hope it goes better than the whole Microsoft deal. The next president turned around and basically undid all the work of the Clinton administration.
You will get no argument from me there. I used the one on Windows a couple of times. Wasn’t all that impressed. But the one on KDE is the one I use most myself.
I love the idea of KDE connect, but its over featured and buggy.
Most times I’m trying to send a file, the computer I’m sending to is not visible which requires me to goto that machine and reset KDE Connect. I can’t send more than one file or KDE Connect crashes and resetting it on Linux is a proper pain.
Plus I just want to use it to transfer files, yet there is no universal setting for the app, thus I have to turn on/off the features I want per device. And when KDE connect randomly forgets a device and I need to re-pair it I have to disable everything again.
At times Bluetooth file transfer is easier. But then I use it on my iPad, where the app can’t work unless its open and in focus. But the alternative is a great big middle finger. Its fantastic and I will deal with the KDE jank.
Wireshark is a shining example of an open source project completely and utterly crapping on the closed source competition. As a result we all benefit. I recall spending a lot of someone else’s money on buying a sort of ruggedized laptop with two ethernet ports to do the job back in the day.
Nowdays, I can run up a tcpdump session on a firewall remotely with some carefully chosen timings and filters and download it to my PC and analyse it with Wireshark.
OK, all so convenient but is it any use?
Say you have a VoIP issue of some sort. The PCAP from tcpdump that you pass to Wireshark can analyse it to the nth degree. Wireshark knows all about SIP and RTP (and IAX) and you can even play back the voice streams or have them graphed so you can see what is wrong or whatever. That’s just VoIP, it has loads of other dissectors and decorators built in.
So what?
The UK (for example) will be dispensing with boring old, but reliable, POTS (Plain Old Telephony System) by 2025. Our entire copper telephony and things like RedCare (defunct soon) will go away.
We are swapping out circuit switching for packet switching. To be fair, a lot of the backend is already TCP/UDP/IP that is shielded away from us proles. When SoGEA (Single Order Generic Ethernet Access) really kicks in then the old school electric end to end connection will be lost in favour of packet switching, which never fails (honest guv).
If you are an IT bod of any sort, you really should be conversant with Wireshark.
In the UK at least, the POTS (Plain Old …) copper phone lines carry an electrical current as well as signals and can power the handset. There are certain guarantees about this so that in an emergency your phone will still work so you can dial 999 (our original emergency number) or 112. Our fire regulations require something like 30 minutes before things should start failing. In the real world, you get out immediately and use your mobile.
We have an emergency alarm monitoring system used by businesses. Its generally known as “Red Care” which was a brand run by BT (British Telecom). You have a small device connected to a phone line (and powered by it) and it will monitor your fire detectors and building access control systems and a 24 hour manned monitoring centre will notify you in the event of an emergency. Nowadays, these devices will use your wifi and internet connection. Sometimes: old school is best.
I had redcare via Age Concern for my mum before she went into a home with dementia - it was a few years ago and it was all that was available.
Nowadays, the panic alarms are, I believe, entirely self contained using a sim card and mobile connectivity and include location information - so they are not reliant on local power or internet connection. That locational information could be life saving - one time my mother got very confused, left her flat and was wandering around outside in freezing conditions. Luckily someone heard her calling out and took her home, but she could easily have died that night and was so confused that she didn’t think to use her dongle which was still around her neck, and it is doubtful it would have been in range of her base station anyway. A modern system can also include geofencing and even positional data (if someone falls down), takes it off, or battery runs low and automatically alert. Just like redcare, the modern systems are manned 24/7 just the same.
I think we might be writing at cross purposes. The system you had for your mum obviously worked effectively for you and that is the important thing.
POTS provide(s|d) a fixed point of reference - your address is registered against the number for 999 etc; it provides power for a handset or device; Its been like that for a lot of decades! These are cast iron guarantees. A POTS line has guarantees, enshrined in UK law, that mobile etc does not have. POTS is circuit switched (well it was) which means there is a physical path between the ends for the duration of the conversation.
So, by old school, I mean that you currently have important guarantees about telephony in the UK that will evaporate in future. In 2025 or so, we in the UK will have finished migrating from our old school POTS copper lines and will enjoy our smart new SoGEA lines instead. Single Order Generic Ethernet Access. Instead of an emulated circuit switched line we will use VoIP across the entire country. Nothing wrong with that but it probably won’t have the guarantees that POTS had.
Red Care is no more - BT have dropped it on the floor as of Feb this year which may indicate that things are not well with our future comms promises. The general system that Red Care was one product of is still available.
This is the important point: Promises (in law) that we used to be able to rely on for comms may (will) be binned.
For the past week and a half of a networking fundamentals class I just finished Tuesday, we were learning the basics of Wireshark. So far the biggest problem I’ve found with it is that I couldn’t find a version for Linux so I could use it on my laptop (couldn’t get it to work on wine either).
Which distro do you use? Ubuntu, Debian, Arch and Gentoo have packages and I’ve no doubt that most others do too. On Linux you should not have to go to random websites and download stuff and faff around - use the built in distribution packages. If you are not sure what you’ve got try this at a command prompt and read the output:
As a last resort, you can run tcpdump on nearly anything and dump to .pcap, transfer that and then open that in Wireshark. Note that modern Windows has a OpenSSH client and server available so getting files around via scp is a doddle. Windows can even do NFS too and there is of course Samba - but CIFS/SMB can be tricksy.
I know what you mean. You’ve already read a load of log files on behalf of an “engineer” who seems incapable of doing it themself. You’ve also eliminated DNS and NTP and laughed at suggestions relating to SFC /SCANNOW. Then you roll up your sleeves and plug into the Matrix …
Accrescent, a secure, alternative app store for Android. Still in an early stage of development though.
UnifiedPush, a privacy-friendly notification system.
LibRedirect, a browser extension that automatically redirects you to private frontends for privacy invasive websites.
movie-web, a web app that let’s you watch any movie/tv show for free. I highly recommend it.
Seal, an amazing Android app for downloading videos. YTDLnis is an alternative.
Cobalt downloader, a website that let’s you download basically everything imaginable from the internet. All kinds of posts, photos and videos from various social media platforms and many other websites.
Not needed, it never connects to the content sources directly, it always uses a proxy. You can even deploy your own proxy for free on Cloudflare or Netlify.
Depends on you, if you don’t trust their proxies, you can deploy your own. movie-web is basically just a search engine (with a pretty good and user friendly UI/UX in my opinion) that pulls content from other sources.
This is fantastic! Just started switching over to Librewolf and Mull. I discovered xBrowserSync in the process, which is a great way to sync browser bookmarks. www.xbrowsersync.org
Catima (saves barcodes for gift cards, gym memberships, etc so you don’t have to worry about the physical card)
Cofi (nice timer for active guidance through coffee brewing recipes)
10,000 Sentences (a language practicing app that doesn’t have a mildly threatening owl 😉)
OSMAnd+ Mapillary, Overlay Maps, and 3D Features (seriously, the best. I only use Google maps to get around traffic these days since, unfortunately, Magic Earth doesn’t work very well in my area)
Obtanium (as a gateway to lesser known software, no shipping to an app store required!)
RethinkDNS (an absolutely amazing piece of software that gives you fine-grained control of the domains your apps are talking to. A bit of a battery sync but it’s been a game changer for me. On my GrapheneOS setup I use it in the Google sandbox to reduce the amount of data scraping servers my Google apps can talk to)
Paperless has taken me from various stacks of important documents strewn around my apartment, to having all of these things nicely organised and searchable.
Borg for backup. I’m really surprised it’s not more widely known. It’s an incredible piece of software.
Also, not really lesser known software, but a lesser known feature of file systems including the ones we use in FOSS operating systems: extended file attributes - useful to add metadata to files without modifying them.
As an add-on (sort of) to Borg, I was told about Vorta yesterday and installed it to run scheduled, encrypted backups of my local machine to an external drive, but you can also ssh to a remote server if you wish. Works like a dream.
Nobody said anything about Resolve being bad. The topic of this conversation and community is Open Source, so a closed source suggestion was not relevant.
@isthereanydeal therefore it's not open source. See for something to be called "open source" it needs a bit more than just for the code to be readable. The only people who define open source as source readable are the people who don't want to create open source software.
@isthereanydeal Nope. That distinction only appeared when big companies kinda became afraid of open source software, so they wanted to redefine the term, create some confusion, corrupt it..
Actually you’re kinda right, their own license doesn’t allow commercial redistribution (kinda similar with CC:NC) which make them not open source. I personally have no problems with that though.
Add comment