My parents for example do not care about tools for drivers installation (everything works just fine already), they don’t know what a kernel is (so there’s no need to switch), snapshots/Flatpak/Steam/Wine/faster package manager are not important (they don’t know what any of that is).
They use a browser and occasionally a text editor, that’s it. Debian + GNOME works really well for them.
Often something simple is just right.
That’s why I recommend it for non-technical users that just need something to browse the web, Debian will not disappoint them.
Also, GNOME is good for that. Many believe it has to look like Windows for less technical people, but people nowadays mostly are more used to Android than Windows, so having overview of open apps, a menu with shutdown and brightness and volume and sort of an app launcher seems quite natural to them.
Recently installed it for people that have never used Linux before and they immediately got it. One of the two struggles with writing emails and attaching files and things like that, but GNOME is simple for them.
Often simple solutions are the best, flashy solutions break and don’t give the stability that’s expected.
Signal TLS Proxy just proxies TLS requests to Signal, you should be able to just read their config and integrate it with your own reverse proxy.
The Signal community forum has several threads on this.
I’ll spend more time talking to people, plotting Linux phone world domination type stuff and planning to take people off WhatsApp with XMPP folks, tbh
Apparently some interesting XMPP talks, but I haven’t had a closer look at the schedule yet
Kubuntu 25.10 is my favourite album.
Although their 24.04 album wasn’t bad either.
As there’s currently no functionality for that type of Secure Boot, it’d require an exploit that manupulates the firmware, which is unlikely to happen any time soon.
I don’t even like Flatpak, yet here I am thinking this is a stupid comment.
Congrats to Katzenmann for publishing this app. Will try it on my Debian phone, was looking for something like this!
Also, CLI apps are not that great on phones. I like CLI on a desktop computer, but on my Debian phone I prefer GUI.
I just wish I could have Secure Boot on a Mac, that’s the reason I don’t have one running Linux, currently on a ThinkPad X13s with a Snapdragon SoC. Encryption without something like Secure Boot… nah.
Once that’s a thing, though, it gets very interesting to me.
We could just improve existing package managers and add sandboxing there.
I only have Flatpak installed for a single program, everything else is in the repos already. And once that one program is in there, I don’t have any use for Flatpak packages any longer. Then I’ll only have one package manager to update, not two.
I prefer just reusing the same software I use on my desktop, which is what I’m doing on my phone. I’ve ported Mobian to the Pixel 3a for precisely that reason.
I want the same software on the go.
Android is a Google project, you’ll always keep fighting your upstream.
Debian is not behind. Changed enter the repos pretty quickly and every 25 months you get a release. Which is perfect, as it means I don’t have to maintenance for my mother that often.
Still there are security patches.
If you want the newest shiny stuff, use Testing or Unstable. I’ve done that for years, for that is not the right choice for everyone, as things change on the time. And I don’t get paid for the tech support I do for my family, so I’d rather see them have larger changes less often. Family would agree, as they find it difficult to learn how to deal with the changes.