Andy Yen, the CEO of Proton (Mail, Drive, VPN, Pass...) answered a lot of the questions you, the community, asked, in an interview that covers basically everything!

He discusses security, privacy, the origins of Proton, how they operate, Linux support, future projects, products and features, quantum computing, passkeys, and more!

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#vpn #privacy #proton #onlinesecurity #protonmail

Timecodes:

00:00 Intro 01:16 How did Proton start? 03:24 Why start with email? 06:03 What is Proton's business model? 08:34 Why set up in Switzerland? 11:33 What data do you have on customers? 14:39 How is encryption important? 18:20 Do you always need to use a VPN? 20:47 Why focus on building an ecosystem? 24:55 Is an Office Suite planned? 26:29 What differentiates Proton from competitors? 30:26 Is Proton a viable alternative to big tech services? 33:31 Why expand to more products instead of finishing existing ones? 37:19 Does the general public care about privacy? 38:45 What's next for Proton services? 40:08 What are the plans for native Linux clients? 46:03 Will ProtonVPN offer dedicated IPs to everyone? 47:46 What's the environmental impact of Proton? 49:27 Proton on F-Droid, without Google Play notifications? 52:03 Why are code repos all separated and hard to find? 53:12 Why are addresses ending in ".me" ? 54:57 When will all apps reach feature parity? 56:24 Will SMTP relay be supported? 57:47 Will Proton focus more on businesses in the future? 59:50 Why put all your eggs in one basket with just Proton services? 01:01:00 Will Proton support passkeys? 01:03:21 Does E2E matter is the recipient isn't using it? 01:04:49 Will Proton disable port forwarding in VPN? 01:06:41 Is encryption enough to make email private? 01:09:06 What protects users from a change in Proton's code licensing? 01:11:14 How does Proton protect its infrastructure? 01:13:14 Impacts of Quantum Computing on privacy and security? 01:14:24 What's the future of Proton Bridge? 01:16:25 When will Proton photos be a thing? 01:17:17 Plans for Proton Notes? 01:18:20 Will VPN support the Apple TV? 01:21:12 Support the channel

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#Linux #OpenSource #TechNews

00:00 Intro 00:31 Sponsor: 10% off your first website 01:28 New Linux tablet from Purism 03:18 GNOME 45 RC is out 05:27 Plasma 6 and 5.27 updates 08:19 XFCE unveils a Wayland roadmap 09:58 New OpenSUSE rolling release distro, LMDE 6, and Ubuntu encryption 11:41 Gaming News: HDR gaming, Steam Deck sale 13:50 Sponsor: Get a PC made to run Linux 14:47 Support the channel

New Linux tablet from Purism

https://www.omglinux.com/purism-librem-11-linux-tablet/

https://puri.sm/products/librem-11/

GNOME 45 RC is out

https://9to5linux.com/gnome-45-release-candidate-arrives-with-last-minute-changes

https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2023/09/new-gnome-45-features

https://blogs.gnome.org/alicem/2023/09/15/libadwaita-1-4/

Plasma 6 and 5.27 updates

https://pointieststick.com/2023/09/15/this-week-in-kde-more-plasma-6-dev/

https://linuxiac.com/fedora-40-to-offer-kde-plasma-6-desktop/

https://9to5linux.com/kde-plasma-5-27-8-improves-hybrid-sleep-and-monitoring-of-nvidia-gpus

XFCE unveils a Wayland roadmap

https://www.phoronix.com/news/Xfce-Wayland-Roadmap-2023

https://wiki.xfce.org/releng/wayland_roadmap

New OpenSUSE rolling release distro, LMDE 6, and Ubuntu encryption

https://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Slowroll

https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2023/09/lmde-6-beta-available-to-download

https://ubuntu.com/blog/tpm-backed-full-disk-encryption-is-coming-to-ubuntu

Gaming News: HDR gaming, Steam Deck sale

https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2023/09/dxvk-nvapi-064-out-now-expanding-hdr-support/

https://www.winehq.org/announce/8.16

https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2023/09/valve-puts-the-steam-deck-and-dock-on-sale-again/

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1675200/view/3686804163591367815

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#Linux #asahi #macbook

00:00 Intro 00:44 Sponsor: Stream any OS or desktop to your browser 01:40 Asahi Linux 02:58 Install 05:15 Hardware support 07:55 Performance & Battery Life 09:33 GPU & Gaming 11:57 App support 13:04 Is it ready yet? 14:45 Sponsor: Get a PC made to run Linux 15:51 Support the channel

You can't currently run any linux distro you want on Apple Silicon hardware, but thankfully, some insanely good developers have created Asahi Linux: it's Arch Linux with some super bleeding edge drivers to support the newest macbooks, and desktop macs, from M1 to M2.

Installing Asahi Linux is a simple process: you just run a single terminal command.

Asahi supports all M1 machines for now, except the mac Studio, and you'll need about 60 gigs of storage. Once the script has done its thing, you'll need to completely shut down the mac, then reboot it by pressing and holding the power button, until you see a volume list to boot on, where you can pick Asahi Linux.

So, on my macbook pro, a lot of stuff works perfectly without anything to do on my part. The keyboard is perfectly recognized. Keyboard backlight also works out of the box. The touchpad works perfectly. The display is recognized with its full resolution although it doesn't support the high refresh rate that it should have, it's locked to 60 hertz. Wifi also worked immediately, but audio didn't.

Bluetooth also works perfectly. Of course charging the laptop works, and in terms of ports, the USB C ports do work, but only as USB C, and USB 2 for now, not USB 3 and not thunderbolt either.

The SD card slot also works, but the HDMI port doesn't. Your webcam also won't work here, and the onboard mic isn't detected for me either.

What about CPU performance and battery life then? The M1 Pro under Linux got a single core score of 1718 and a multi core score of 10079.

https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/21697738

Compare that to Geekbench 5 on macOS, where I got 1775 in single core, and 12521 in multi core. That's a difference of 3% for single core, and 24% for multi core, in favor of macOS.

https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/21697762

In terms of battery life, though, it's WAY WORSE. With youtube videos playing in a loop in the background, Asahi barely lasted for about 5 hours.

THe Asahi Linux team managed to write a fully conformant OpenGL driver for Apple SIlicon, something APple themselves doesn't have, because they only support their own graphics API, called Metal. You CAN install these GPU drivers, optionally, with a few commands. They will replace your current version of mesa, with one including these nice openGL drivers.

And now, you DO get GPU acceleration, and it's now recommended you use Wayland, because the Asahi team said X11 wouldn't really be a supported target for their graphics drivers.

As per gaming, don't expect much here. Steam won't run, because, well, it's ARM, and Steam on Linux doesn't have an ARM version. Even if it did, there are no Vulkan drivers yet, so stuff like DXVK wouldn't work, and there is no translation layer baked in to run x86 apps in there.

And of course, we need to talk about app support. Asahi Linux is basically Arch + more drivers, so you do get the AUR and everything else Arch has access to. BUT it's also an OS running on ARM, which means some software just isn't available for that architecture.

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#Linux #Ubuntu #linuxdistro

00:00 Intro 00:51 Sponsor: Regain control of your network connection 01:49 Why not just use Ubuntu? 03:54 Debian (instant clickbait) 05:14 Linux Mint 06:19 Rhino Linux 07:37 Pop!_OS 09:18 Tuxedo OS 11:01 Why not these ones? 13:24 The LTS problem 14:23 Sponsor: Get a PC made to run Linux 15:28 Support the channel

Generally, what people dislike about Ubuntu are the inclusion of Snaps, the proprietary backend of the Snap Store, the opt-out telemetry, and some questionable decisions over the years.

But you could always disable all of that? That's just part of the story. If what you dislike is Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu, then disabling this doesn't really help.

And we'll begin by immediately lying, as this one isn't Ubuntu based: it's actually the one Ubuntu is based on: Debian. If what you like about Ubuntu, and what you want to keep using, is apt, the package manager, the vast software repos, but you want a vanilla KDE or GNOME experience, and none of the Canonical projects and decisions, Debian might be a really solid bet.

Mint is based on the latest Ubuntu LTS, and removes basically everything that makes Ubuntu, Ubuntu: snaps aren't there, some apps that don't have a debian package anymore in Ubuntu have on in Mint, like Chromium, and they don't use the GNOME desktop: you get Cinnamon, a desktop Mint developed themselves, once based on GNOME 3, but now pretty much its own thing.

One you might want to try is Rhino Linux. It's also a relatively recent distro, and it moves away from the Ubuntu template by being a rolling release: it doesn't give you major upgrades, it's always updated in the background, especially the Linux kernel, and some important apps, like Firefox.

Rhino Linux doesn't use the GNOME desktop by default, it uses its own vision of XFCE, that, let's be honest, feels very much like modern GNOME. You can use apt, but Rhino Linux also comes with a meta package manager, called Rhino-pkg, that lets you install debian packages from the repos, flatpaks, snaps, and it also lets you use pacstall, an equivalent to the Arch User repository for Ubuntu.

Another Ubuntu based distro that has a few cool tricks up its sleeve is PopOS. PopOS has some updates on top of that base, notably for drivers and the Linux kernel, and has some applications that are provided in their own repo, so you're not stuck on very old versions of important apps. They also have some interesting tweaks to the GNOME desktop: they offer a different experience, with a dock by default, an app launcher, and auto tiling features that let you switch from floating windows to a tiling window manager at the press of a button, or with a keyboard shortcut.

If you're more of a KDE user, then there's Tuxedo OS. It's Ubuntu based, with the latest KDE apps and desktop, plucked straight from KDE Neon's repositories: this means you get a semi rolling release model, with access to the repos for Ubuntu's latest LTS version, plus some extra repos on top of that for more recent kernel and drivers, and some applications that need to be more up to date.

And now for a list of the distros I didn't really include, and the reasons why!

The first one is Zorin OS: while it's a good take on Ubuntu, being basically exactly Ubuntu LTS, but with a customized desktop, pre made layouts, and support for virtually every packaging format out of the box, it's also based on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS, and the Linux kernel 5.15.

The second one is elementary OS. It's based on 22.04 LTS, and does have access to the full Ubuntu repos. While I personally think it's a really great option, the defaults won't fit everyone, including the removal of all debian based packages from their graphical app store.

And then there are all the Ubuntu flavours: they're also now constrained by Canonical's decisions, like preventing them from shipping another packaging format than snap.

Give a try to the brand new redesign of Thunderbird: https://www.thunderbird.net

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#Linux #OpenSource #TechNews

00:00 Intro 00:29 Sponsor: Thunderbird 01:23 Plasma 6 has a release date, and it's far away 03:42 The new Ubuntu App Center looks like a regression 05:45 GNOME 45 will break all extensions 07:14 Linux drivers and performance updates 08:45 The EU won't force Apple to use RCS for now 10:24 Chrome gets its new tracking tech 12:06 Gaming News: market share, new Valve devices... 15:09 Sponsor: Get a PC made to run Linux 16:11 Support the channel

Plasma 6 has a release date, and it's far away

https://pointieststick.com/2023/09/06/september-plasma-6-update/

https://cullmann.io/posts/kf6-release-plan/

https://pointieststick.com/2023/09/08/this-week-in-kde-power-management-galore/

The new App Center landed in Ubuntu 23.10

https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2023/09/ubuntu-app-center-app-arrives

GNOME 45 will break all extensions

https://blogs.gnome.org/shell-dev/2023/09/02/extensions-in-gnome-45/

Linux drivers and performance updates

https://www.phoronix.com/news/Intel-Vulkan-MSAA-Compute-Queue

https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linux-6.6-Input

https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linux-6.6-Optimize-Lacking-ERMS

The EU won't force Apple to use RCS for now

https://www.androidcentral.com/apps-software/eu-apple-imessage-gatekeeper-ruling

Chrome gets its new tracking tech

https://gizmodo.com/google-privacy-sandbox-now-on-every-chrome-browser-1850812404

Gaming News: market share, new Valve devices...

https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2023/09/linux-continues-rising-above-3-desktop-user-share-on-statcounter/

https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2023/09/linux-user-share-remains-above-macos-in-the-latest-steam-survey/

https://steamcommunity.com/groups/steamworks/announcements/detail/3684558162504860651

https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2023/09/linux-updates-tease-valve-galileo-and-sephiroth-steam-deck-refresh-or-new-vr/

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#privacy #security #mythbusting

00:00 Intro 00:27 Security = Privacy 01:51 Sponsor: Private and secure email with Proton Mail 02:52 Telemetry is evil 05:18 Tor is a honeypot 06:52 Big Companies are more secure 08:58 Incognito mode is private 09:55 VPNs are the only tool you need 11:02 Privacy is impossible 12:07 I have nothing to hide 13:27 Always research yourself 14:09 Sponsor: Get a PC made to run Linux

Security = privacy

This one is obviously not true. Security and privacy aren't linked in any way. The general best practice is to find the services you need that have a good reputation for security, and among these services, try and find one that is private enough for your needs.

Telemetry is always bad

This is simply not true. Telemetry isn't always bad. The image we have of telemetry is that of Windows or macOS, but there are plenty of other ways to do telemetry.

In itself telemetry is a very useful thing: it lets projects or companies identify what is important, what they should fix first. It doesn't mean this data is used to profile you, or being sold to anyone.

If the company or project is something you trust, and that has no current business in data collection, or advertising, then it's probably not a problem.

Tor is an NSA honeypot

TOR is regularly accused of being a honeypot for the NSA. Something that is completely false, as far as anyone knows**

Yes, TOR is based on code developed by the US Navy. Funding for Tor also came from the US government, mostly. The code, however, is open source, and audited.

Is Tor entirely safe? Of course not. It's not a silver bullet, nothing is, and it can be vulnerable to man in the middle attacks or to specific types of monitoring, but it's not an NSA project that's designed to trap you.

Big companies are more secure

This statement is debatable. It's true in some cases. A recent report shows that smaller firms are 3 times more likely to be attacked than big businesses. 60% of cyberattacks seem to target smaller companies. But that's likelihood to be attacked, not necessarily successful attacks.

What is also true is that not all big tech companies are very good on the security front. So, while yes, bigger companies can be more secure than smaller ones, it's not a one size fits all thing, and what you need to look for is what kind of security the company you're interested in for a specific service or app has put in place.

Incognito mode is private

It isn't. What incognito mode does, is make you private locally, on your device, as it doesn't store data on what you've visited, your credentials, and the like.

Incognito mode doesn't, however, prevent websites from tracking you, or fingerprinting you.

VPNs are the only privacy tool you need

VPNs aren't a magical thing that instantly makes you private. Using a VPN will change your IP address and make you harder to track online, that's true. They're a good tool, but you need to make sure that the company that provides the VPN service doesn't log everything you do, and doesn't give these logs to various other actors. If you log into a service or website while using a VPN, it still knows it's you, obviously.

Privacy is impossible

This one has to be the most nefarious myth ever. Privacy is NOT impossible. It's not easy, but it's not impossible. Generally, this statement just betrays a lack of motivation. It will never be 100% perfect, but you can limit immensely what is known or collected about you.

I have nothing to hide

This is complete bogus. First, if you think you have nothing to hide, you're wrong. Everyone has something that might not be illegal, but might be deemed immoral or unacceptable by someone else.

Second, you might feel this way now, but circumstances change, and the data collected about you doesn't go away. By leaving all these tidbits of data stored everywhere, you're basically giving ammunition to the future.

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#nixos #linux #linuxdistro

00:00 Intro 00:36 Sponsor: Kasm, the best remote desktop tool 01:22 What is NixOS? 04:20 Using the configuration file 08:58 Nix Package Manager 11:03 Updating and unstable channel 12:48 Nix is way more than that 14:53 Sponsor: get a PC made to run Linux 15:58 Support the channel

NixOS is a Linux distribution that is completely and entirely reproducible. Everything you use is defined in a configuration file that is used to build your system. All the services, packages, options, partition layout, hardware, everything, is in this config file.

If you're a developer, your eyes might be sparkling right now: that's right, one config file to exactly replicate your entire development environment.

You also can never get into dependency hell. Packages all declare exactly which versions of each library they need, and these versions are all installed side by side and kept, not erased by newer versions.

To create your configuration, there's a main configuration file in /etc/nixos, called configuration.nix.

This file uses its own specific syntax, that is entirely functional: it describes everything the system uses and with which options, from the hardware, the bootloader, the services, the packages, the apps, the users, everything.

This file is then used to build your operating system. Nix will read everything in there, and install, configure, and enable or disable everything, based on what the file contains. So, if you build a nixOS system with the same config file as someone else, you'll get exactly the same system.

Once you rebuild your system, there are now multiple entries in the boot loader: one for the new build, and one for the old one: you can always roll back to the previous configuration.

Of course, all of this requires root access to edit the main config of the system. But if you don't have root access, or if you don't want to add programs to your main reproducible config, but just test them out for now, you can also install packages as a regular user, using the nix package manager. Or you can add flatpak to your config file, or run appimages. But installing programs will be mainly done using the Nix package manager.

The Nix package manager works on any Linux distro, but also on macOS, WSL, and more. It's preverytty easy to use. If I want to install, for example, OBS, I'll just type

nix-env -iA nixos.obs-studio

The -i is the argument to install, and the capital A is to tell the package manager to install using the specific name of the package, instead of looking through the whole repo, which is way slower.

If I want to remove the package, I can use nix-env -e obs-studio, and it will be removed. Note that installing packages with nix-env doesn't add them to the config file.

NixOS works with channels. By default, you'll use the Stable channel, with tested packages that get security updates only, and major feature updates when there's a new release of NixOS, every 6 months.

To update, you can just run the command

sudo nix-channel --update

This will pull all the latest package versions from the channel your system uses.

Then you run the "nix-rebuild switch --upgrade" command, and your system will grab every new version of every package, and rebuild the system based on your configuration file.

Important to note, the new version of a package is installed alongside the old one. The new versions are the ones that will be used, thanks to a simple symbolic link system that always points to the newest version of a package, but you can rollback to an older one.

To get newer packages, at the risk of having a less stable system, you can switch to the unstable channel.

Quick post to recap the #Fediverse tools I use (in case you’re interested):

- Pixelfed: @TLENick it’s mostly pics of my city and the coast around it, sometimes of my office for the day
- News podcast: @tlenewspodcast using Castopod, weekly Linux and FOSS News podcast
- Videos: @thelinuxexperiment_channel All my YouTube videos, also available on Peertube (generally 1h after their initial publication on YT)

That should be it!

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00:00 Intro 00:35 Sponsor: Save 10% off your first purchase of a website with Squarespace 01:34 France arrested people for being private and using Linux 03:53 Windows 11 is losing users 05:44 System76 announces big updates to their FOSS firmware 07:27 Debian 12 is now out 09:04 BlendOS 3 offers a new spin on immutable distros 10:53 Other news: Thunderbird beta, extensions support donations 13:17 Gaming News: Apple uses Wine and VKD3D, Proton updates 15:03 Sponsor: Get a PC that runs Linux perfectly 16:07 Support the channel

#Linux #OpenSource #TechNews

France arrested people for being private and using Linux

https://www.laquadrature.net/2023/06/05/affaire-du-8-decembre-le-chiffrement-des-communications-assimile-a-un-comportement-terroriste/

Windows 11 is losing users

https://www.techradar.com/news/windows-11-lost-users-this-month-should-microsoft-be-worried

System76 announces big updates to their FOSS firmware

https://blog.system76.com/post/major-updates-for-system76-open-firmware-june-2023

Debian 12 is now out

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=klfgPmUsirs

BlendOS 3 offers a new spin on immutable distros

https://blendos.co/blend-os-v3/

Other news: Thunderbird beta, extensions support donations, Ubuntu adds quarter tiling, and staged releases for snaps

https://ubuntu.com//blog/release-management-for-snaps-made-simpler

https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2023/06/ubuntu-23-10-window-tiling-feature

https://linuxiac.com/gnome-extensions-now-supports-donation/

https://www.thunderbird.net/en-US/thunderbird/115.0beta/releasenotes/#whatsnew

Gaming News: Apple uses Wine and VKD3D, & Proton updates

https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2023/06/proton-experimental-fixes-up-halo-mcc-ubisoft-connect-creativerse/

https://www.theverge.com/2023/6/7/23752164/apple-mac-gaming-game-porting-toolkit-windows-games-macos

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00:00 Intro 00:37 Sponsor: 100$ free credit for your Linux or gaming server 01:37 Tux got fat 02:18 Minix Creator did NOT like Linux 03:07 Linux was first to implement crucial stuff 03:52 Linux wasn't always under the GPL 04:32 Linux is the biggest software project in the world 05:07 Linux was almost called something else 05:51 Why is Tux Tux? 06:36 Linux has terrible codenames 07:16 Torvalds almost lost the trademark 08:00 Linux isn't just a kernel 08:24 Torvalds could have abandoned Linux 09:06 The other project Torvalds created 09:54 Linux runs Hollywood 10:35 Linux runs space 11:17 No science without Linux 12:07 Sponsor: Get a PC that runs Linux perfectly 12:56 Support the channel

Linux is known for being relatively lean and not using too much disk space, but compared to its first version, it's positively bloated. The first Linux release used only 65kilobytes of disk space. Today, a compiled kernel uses 5 to 10 megabytes, which is about 153 times heavier than the original release.

Linux was initially created as a Minix clone. The creator of Minix, Andrew Tanenbaum said, a few years later, that Linux was obsolete, and that GNU Hurd would supplant it soon enough.

https://www.oreilly.com/openbook/opensources/book/appa.html

Linux has also been first to ever support the x86 64 bit architecture, and Linux was also the first to have USB 3.0 drivers added.

The Linux kernel was also initially released under a custom license created by Linus Torvalds, which imposed restrictions on commercial use of his project, and on redistributing it. Fortunately for all of use, this didn't last long, and with version 0.99 in 1992, the kernel moves to the GNU GPL.

https://web.archive.org/web/20070826212454/http://www.tlug.jp/docs/linus.html

The Linux kernel is also the biggest software project in the world, with the biggest number of contributors and companies involved in its development.

The first name Torvalds landed on was Freax, for Free Unix. But as things happened, hosting that Freax kernel was initially done by Ari Lemmke, a member of the staff for Helsinki's university, and this person created a directory called Linux, because that was Torvalds's working name.

In terms of mascot, and the name of that mascot is Tux, not because penguins wear tuxedos naturally, but because it stands for Torvalds Unix. Why a penguin, though? It's because Torvalds was bitten by a penguin.

But the linux kernel also has codenames. For example, version 3.14 was called "shuffling zombie juror", version 4.3 was "blurry fish butt", and version 6.0 is "hurr durr I'm a ninja sloth".

https://handwiki.org/wiki/List_of_Linux_kernel_names

But also, the Linux name was almost lost to a trademark dispute. In 1995, someone named William R. Della Croce Junior, the most evil sounding name I ever heard, filed for a trademark on Linux. He then proceeded to send letters to various Linux distributors asking for 10% royalties, as the ultimate one person patent troll.

Steve Jobs offered Torvalds a job around the year 2000, with a sizeable salary, and a good position in the organization. The pitch was "work on Unix for the biggest user base". The only condition was that he abandoned Linux and stopped working on it altogether.

https://www.theverge.com/2012/3/22/2893581/linus-torvalds-linux-founder-turned-down-steve-jobs-offer

But Torvalds isn't just the creator of the Linux kernel. He also created Git.

Linux is basically running the film industry and Hollywood. The first movie to use Linux was Titanic in 1997, rendered using OpenSUSE, but it didn't stop there. Avatar's effects were rendered on Linux server farms. lord of the Rings? Linux. I Robot? Linux.

Linux also runs the space industry. And also, in the supercomputer world, Linux is the ONLY option. Out of the fastest 500 supercomputers, Linux runs 100% of them, or at least it did in early 2023.

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#opensource #freesoftware #framasoft

00:00 Intro 00:33 Sponsor: 10% off your first purchase of a website with Squarespace 01:32 What is Framasoft 02:52 CHATONS 04:16 Productivity Services 07:18 Communication & Organization 10:57 Other projects 12:06 Parting Thoughts 13:28 Sponsor: Get a PC that runs Linux perfectly, with Tuxedo 14:32 Support the channel

Framasoft's Website: https://framasoft.org/en/

Framasoft is a french non profit, that was founded in 2004, is financed by user donations, and they provide a LOT of privacy focused, free and open source tools you can use.

Let's start with one important project, which is called CHATONS, which means Kittens in French. CHATONS is a collective designed to let users find alternatives to big tech services. It's also a simple website that lets you search for a specific service, like a VPN, cloud storage, note taking, or more, so you can find a trustworthy service that provides that.

Now, let's look at a few tools Framasoft offer for productivity.

First is Framapad, a lightweight equivalent to Google Docs. It won't give you all the features Docs have, but that's not the goal. The goal is to have a collaborative, online note taking tool that will be enough for a lot of users.

The spreadsheet pendant of Framapad is FramaCalc, which is a simple online spreadsheet app you can also access without creating an account. While the interface isn't the most user friendly ever, it's serviceable enough. It's also free software, using the CPAL license, and it's based on Ethercalc.

You also have FramaForms, a Google forms alternative that lets you create a quick survey, and share it with others so they can fill it in. There's also Framindmaps, which as its name implies, lets you create mind maps, and Framacarte, which lets you create custom maps based on Open Street maps.

Now for organizing your daily life, Framasoft also has a bunch of tools available.

The first one is Framagenda, which is nothing less than your own Nextcloud calendar, with all its features: you can create your calendars, events in them, and connect it to any Nextcloud compatible app, including the GNOME or KDE Online accounts if you want.

Next is FramaDate, which lets you create a small poll for a few dates, so people can tell you which date and time works best for them. It's basically similar to something like Doodle.com, where people can enter their name, and say for each date and time if they're available or not.

If you're trying to organize a bigger event, Framasoft also has an alternative, called Mobilizon. You'll need to create an account to use this. You can then create your own event, complete with a category, some tags, start and end dates, a location, description, a website URL...

If what you want is a simple video conference tool, there's Framatalk, which will let you create a Jitsi meeting without an account or anything, and invite other people in it.

For discussion groups, there's Framavox. It will require an account for everyone participating in the group, and it lets you creates conversations, polls, share files, create sub groups, and more. Think of it as a Facebook page cross-bred with a small private forum.

And if you were looking for something like Slack or Discord, but open source, there's FramaTeam, which is based on Mattermost, an almost perfect 1:1 clone of Slack, using the MIT license.

And of course, they have other projects as well. Framalistes lets you create a mailing list and manage people who subscribe to them, Framagames will give you a compilation of small games you can play in your browser, like 2048, Sudoku, SOlitaire, Tetris, Framinetest is their own Minetest server, an open source minecraft clone, and Framasoft also created Peertube, the peer to peer, activityPub enabled alternative to Youtube.

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#Linux #Windows #ux

00:00 Intro 00:35 Sponsor: Monitor and secure your internet connection with Safing 01:35 The Start Menu 05:34 How the start menu affects Linux desktops 06:42 Disjointed User Interface 08:55 Program installs and storage 12:22 System Updates 14:17 Windows design matters to Linux 15:53 Sponsor: get a PC that supports Linux perfectly 16:46 Support the channel

This is going to be controversial, but the Windows menu, or really the whole start menu paradigm is bad. This menu is used to start and open things. It's not a multitasking experience. So having a menu that occupies a small corner of your screen is not great.

The reality of things is that people are now just used to it. In Windows 11, the centered menu is a disaster, and once it's open, it's just a bad launcher. Apps are sorted chronologically, so if you don't know the name of a program, you're out of luck, and you can't create any folder that you could build muscle memory upon. And there's the case of opening multiple apps in a row. With the windows menu, you need to open it as many times as the number of apps you want to launch. Not efficient.

The issue is, this bad menu design affects Linux desktops. Because many distributions or desktops don't want users to run away, they mostly moved to a windows like menu.

We all know about the mismatched UI of Windows.The real problem is that people are now completely used to it. And for Linux, it means that UX, or just UI is not often considered.

Next, let's look at how apps are installed on the system. On Windows, while the store is progressively getting better, the main way to install a program is still to head over to its website, download an executable, and run it, then click next a few times, pick a location, and let the program install itself.

The files are stored in a single folder usually, with all the libraries the program needs, and the program itself in its own directory structure, that varies from program to program.

And this is a bad design. First, for security reasons. Storing executables and libraries and data in a single folder is a surefire way to have badly set permissions on these files.

Second, it makes finding the files you're looking for difficult. You need to learn each program's directory structure, and look online to find where the data is stored.

And this bad design on Windows also influences Linux desktops negatively. Because to this day, I still get people telling me it's easier to install a program on Windows than on Linux. Seriously.

The reality is that a lot of people don't understand how to install programs on Linux. They're so used to downloading them manually that they try to replicate this, and get super confused.

And a lot of newcomers to Linux just don't understand where the files a program uses live, because they're used to having them lumped into a single directory. The better way to look at it is: what type of file am I looking to access? And then this tells you the folder where it's been stored.

It's no secret that system updates are dreaded by a lot of Windows users. Windows updates have always been problematic, super slow to install, they require a reboot in most cases, and they can make your system worse than it was, so it's no wonder that many users are wary of these.

App updates are also handled separately from system updates. And people that moved from Windows to Linux will keep this fear of updates, because it's been drilled into them again and again that updates or even worse, major version upgrades, aren't a good thing. But they ARE.

And that negatively affects Linux desktops, because you'll get plenty of people who don't apply their updates and then ask for help about a bug that's been fixed already, or who stick to insecure software that has patches available. It makes the work of maintainers and developers harder.

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#mastodon #fediverse #socialmedia

00:00 Intro 00:39 Sponsor: Extend the life of your Python applications 01:30 The Fediverse: a network of social networks 04:57 ActivityPub: all your social networks can talk to each other 06:44 How Mastodon works 08:33 How PeerTube works 10:19 How PixelFed works 11:39 Parting thoughts 13:02 Sponsor: buy a device that runs Linux perfectly 14:11 Support the channel

Join Mastodon: https://joinmastodon.org/servers Join Peertube: https://joinpeertube.org/ Join PixelFed: https://pixelfed.org/servers

PixelFed App for iOS: https://testflight.apple.com/join/5HpHJD5l PixelFed App for Android: https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.pixeldroid.app/

List of Fediverse services: https://fediverse.party/en/miscellaneous/

Fediverse is a contraction of Federated Universe. It's basically a very large network of servers that form, well, a social network. But contrary to the ones you might be used to, like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and others, the Fediverse is composed of different services.

The more well known are Mastodon, a Twitter-like microblogging service, PeerTube, a youtube-like platform, or PixelFed, an Instagram-like social network, but there are a TON of others.

Each service is also decentralized, which means there is not one big server farm where everything is hosted: each service is split into instances, basically independent servers, with different goals.

ActivityPub is an open standard, that lets all services on the Fediverse talk to each other. How does that work? Well, in practice, it means you can use your Mastodon app to follow a Peertube channel, or someone that posts pictures on PixelFed, or see new articles from a Wordpress website.

And this goes a bit further: for example, if I comment on Mastodon on a post from Peertube, that comment will also appear on Peertube underneath the video.

Let's start with Mastodon. Mastodon is basically Twitter, but open source and decentralized. It lets you post messages with up to 500 characters, it supports images, videos, polls, content warnings, animated avatar pictures, emojis, links, mentions, hashtags, anything you're used to on Twitter. Mastodon has 1.5 million active users, which might seem small compared to Twitter, but it's more than enough to have interesting conversations with a lot of cool people.

To join Mastodon, all you need to do is pick a server, also called an instance. You can pick any server you like, and it will let you interact with everyone else on any other server.

And then, you can use Mastodon on the web, by typing the address of your instance in your browser, for example, for me, it's mastodon.social, or you can use a mobile app.

Now let's talk about PeerTube. It's a Youtube alternative, although it's much, much smaller. Peertube is also decentralized, being split into different servers, that are federated together, so you can follow people from different instances and still have a complete subscription feed. It also supports ActivityPub, which means you could subscribe to my peerTube channel from a mastodon account, and have a post in your timeline every time I publish a video.

And as a creator, it also lets you sync your youtube channel to it, so you can auto-publish all your videos to Peertube in a few clicks, which is also a great help.

To watch peertube, just type the address of your instance in your browser's URL, for me it's tilvids.com.

Another cool service on the Fediverse is PixelFed. It's basically Instagram, without all the crap they tacked on lately, like reels, or lives. It's just pictures and videos. It's free software, it also uses the ActivityPub standard, so you can follow PixelFed users on Mastodon, for example, and it's ad-free.

It also lets you add filters, just like Instagram, or crop, resize, adding alt text, and you can use hashtags, locations, or create collections, basically photo albums.