I think that error is related to a missing dbus session but don’t quote me on that.

You will probably find it easier to use a system level service, but run it as your unprivileged user with User= and Group= directives. Once you get that working, there are various other parameters you can add to harden the service if you like.

This is a good reference for hardening: https://docs.arbitrary.ch/security/systemd.html

The arch wiki has a good general reference for all things systemd: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Systemd

You can pick up a sim for about $15 and then get pay as you go from 7-11 wireless or whatever other cheap provider. This gives you a “real” secondary number and doesn’t cost much if you aren’t using any data.

I agree with the general idea of what you’re saying, but it’s a slippery slope.

Most people I know personally would never take the effort to learn anything past the point of “Ask ChatGPT” when they have a problem. What happens when the model is wrong, or simply cannot solve the problem? Or maybe they have no network connection and cannot run something suitable locally?

At that level of coddling, then they might not even have the ability to find and open a man page, or edit a config file without a GUI. And that’s a problem. It’s not even Linux-specific. I went to school with “smart” computer science students who don’t even understand file extensions or what a shortcut conceptually is.

What I’m getting at, is there needs to be some kind of balance, or people will just gradually become more useless.

Overall, it’s good, but you need to know what exactly you’re signing up for. The reality is that you can run a decentralized or centralized E2EE chat server, along with voice/video calling, without much effort. There are hiccups with the key exchange that suck, and metadata isn’t really protected. It really comes down to if it meets your particular requirements.

My basic check is: Are there investors / vc people involved? If so, then it will inevitably enshittify. If not, then requires further investigation. OSI-approved open source is a big plus

Even when choosing what seems like good software, I think it’s important to consider switching costs. How easily can you move to another solution, say the second pick, if things go south?

I believe the auto-detect is based on a geo-ip database. If you are connecting from a VPN or datacenter IP then I imagine you might have unexpected results.

I’ve been using Arch off and on for a long time, since it was horrible to install and updates did often break stuff. This is not the case now 🖖, and the Arch wiki is your friend.

1. Consider using btrfs with automated snapshots using yabsnap. It includes a configurable pacman hook in case something goes awry. Also just nice to have snapshots in case you accidentally delete a file or something.

2. Use paru, an AUR helper. Good for random things which may not be officially packaged. Expect to run into failures, and learn to diagnose them. Sometimes it’s just a new dependency the packager missed. For both paru and pacman, clean the cache once in a while or automatically, or things will get out of hand.

3. Do the “manual” setup, at least the first time, so you have an idea what’s going on. Don’t forget to install essential stuff like iwd (if needed) when you do pacstrap, or else you might have to boot from live again to fix it. Once you’re done, take care to follow the important post install steps, like setting up a user with sudo, a firewall, sshd, etc.

As for general setup, I’ve recently embraced systemd-networkd and systemd-resolved. Might be worth giving it a shot, since there is no default network manager like application. You can even convert all your wireguard client configs into networkd interfaces.

Best practice: Keep a personal log of various tweaks and things you’ve configured, and set up automated backups (more of general guidance).

Have fun!

Some interesting discussions there, looks like they won’t be hard up finding sponsors or places to move. Nice to see.

It only took what… 20 years?

You can also just copy your thunderbird profile directory, if it’s the same OS, to a different system and it seems to just work. I did this to copy the whole setup and synced mails from desktop to laptop. I also tried this from Windows -> Linux and it did not like that, so I used the import profile feature and re-entered all the passwords.

I’ve used Ansible to deploy docker compose and it worked pretty well. You will have to do some learning if you aren’t familiar with it, but I’d say it’s worth it.

Like others, I would not recommend Jenkins.

My understanding is that admins would be able to access it. I’m not sure if this means any admin, or just the ones of the sender and recipient.

I manage a (relatively small) gitea instance, the software that forgejo was recently hard forked from. The maintenance is incredibly simple, really no problem if you’ve ever run any sort of publicly facing web service.

In this case I meant the one packaged by your distro.

Running any binary that you can’t examine the source of (and confirm it was built from it without modification) is risky. It’s mostly a balance of trust and risk. Even developers have been known to insert what we could malware.

That said, if you get your cracked content from a trusted source, I’d say it’s generally safe. Otherwise, exercise extreme caution.

Is GMG an official reseller? Maybe I am out of the loop, but I thought they operated in the grey market.

I would use the native version. For something like this, it makes sense that it should have less restricted/sandboxed access to the underlying system.