IIRC a reverse proxy doesn’t add much security in itself. If there’s a vulnerability in the login page,.it doesn’t matter if the attacker reaches the page directly or via a reverse proxy. For security you’d add an auth layer, but that can also prevent the native jellyfin apps from reaching your server. This is why many people use Wireguard or Tailscale.

In short, it’s a lot more complicated than Stremio.

what’s going on with Bottles?

how are you using 128 GB? Genuinely curious because I run over 20 services with only 8 GB

same reasons as OP. I want my desktop OS to be simple, and I focus on my homelab

This might not be your issue, but I remember for me there’s this button in the tray that appears after all updates are downloaded. You click it and there’s an option to restart and update. If you just go to the main menu to restart, it doesn’t always show this “restart and update” option, and just restarts without installing the updates. Though even if you make this mistake you shouldn’t need to re-download the updates. Just go to KDE Discover and check for updates again, and the button will appear in the tray again. I think.

Also maybe you’d like the Fedora atomic distros, like Bazzite or Aurora. Unlike installing the updates during reboot, they install them in a “disabled state” while the system is running. Then you reboot and it automatically boots to the new version, no need to wait for any installation. What’s neat is that it’s really hard to break. Even if you pull the power while it’s installing updates, it will just use the previous version and try installing again. No risk of corruption.

No unfortunately it does not. Sometimes the webpage itself contains a meta tag with the original URL but not always

I have tons of webpages saved using the Firefox built-in page saver, which saves and html file and a corresponding folder for the other resources (images, javascript). Would be cool if these could be imported as well. Though maybe the resource folder can be ignored and the html file can already be imported?

what do you mean by “gives back”? To whom? For example, why Jellyfin over any of the *arrs

I think the issues are more likely to happen if you update less frequently. I used an Arch distro on my secondary PC for a few months. I admit I never ran into any major breaking issues, but every week or so when I did an update it sure felt like I would run into an issue since the updates were massive. I didn’t even have that much installed. Also reading through PKGBUILD and changelogs was annoying, but if you didn’t do it and ran into an issue the forums would just blame you for not reading them.

So while I didn’t run into any major issues myself, I could sense that maintaining it was more work than I wanted. And later on I read this lemmy post which validated my decision: Realizing Arch isn’t for me after updating broke VLC.

Compare this to the update process of Bazzite. It happens in the background, and automatically applies when you reboot. You don’t even need to be aware of it. You can easily rollback if something breaks. And it’s pretty guaranteed to be stable because all Bazzite users have the same base, so it’s well tested before being released.

Since you liked Fedora but not GNOME, sounds like Bazzite or Fedora KDE could have worked out well too. Just something to consider if you want something more stable and less cutting edge

My evidence was small but should have been easy to understand:

1. systemd uses machine-id 2 systemd adoption is high amongst distros

You can argue correlation vs cause but I’d argue this is not zero evidence.

You are on the other hand assuming that it would have been easy to avoid machine-id. Do you have evidence for this claim?

Why should I have to provide evidence while you provide none

First off, your post wasn’t about machine-id, it was about systemd using machine-id, yes? If you think machine-id is a mistake, blame Linux, not systemd. This is a shift from your original claim.

Second, I’ve already explained my argument many times. Machine-id was likely a simple solution to a few problems Linux faced, and Linux was able to keep pace with competition and gain popularity. Same with systemd adopting machine-id. If they focused on fingerprint resistance, then other core features of modern Linux distros would have lagged behind, and I might not be using Linux today.

I feel like my argument is not that hard to follow. I’m saying that just because machine-id makes fingerprinting easier, doesn’t make it a bad decision because it could still lead to a net positive. In the Linux kernel’s case, it might have been a simple solution to other problems, at a time when fingerprinting was not a concern. In systemd’s case, it might have made it easier to accomodate legacy systems that depended on machine-id. Same with flatpak.

Linux, systemd, and flatpak are all fairly successful within their target markets. Clearly, you’re going to need more evidence if you want to claim it’s a bad decision.

In fact even if your goal is privacy and fingerprint resistance, just switching to another init system is not a panacea. First off, as mentioned in the flatpak github issue linked earlier, there are tons of other markers aside from machine-id that can be used for fingerprinting. And if you’re using a mainstream distro, your new init system is likely less supported, meaning more bugs, worse security, and potentially a net loss in privacy.

Win the battle, lose the war. This is why I brought up compromise and strategy earlier.

In the end, it’s hard to say how individual decisions like machine-id, contribute to the net result. There are pros and cons to each decision. Maybe if there was a competitor that didn’t use machine-id and pulled ahead due to that decision, but I’m not seeing one.

You could say the same about Linux itself and machine-id. Fingerprint resistance just wasn’t in the project scope.

Perhaps ask in the github issue I linked earlier why machine-id is necessary at all. They may have their reasons. My guess is that it makes it easier for devs to port their applications to flatpak, namely legacy apps that depended on machine-id.

I’m saying that if flatpak tried to implemenet machine-id obfuscation before releasing, they might not have ever released. By constraining their scope, they were able to focus on their other goals and release, and a lot of Linux users including me, are glad they did so. You can think of systemd’s machine-id situation in the same way

I was agreeing with you. Systemd breaks unix philosophy. You know what else breaks unix philosophy? The Linux kernel. It’s absolutely massive. If you want unix philosophy, switch to a microkernel.

Also another commenter in this discussion pointed out that flatpak does not actually obfuscate machine-id. You can read the issue tracker here: https://github.com/flatpak/flatpak/issues/4311

Basically comes down to a design decisions from 15+ years ago, in things that flatpak depends on. This is an open issue to this day. Would it have been better for flatpak to have delayed release until this was solved, possibly remaining unreleased to this day? Meanwhile everybody would have to use regular system packages, which not only have access to machine-id, but also the entire userspace, with zero sandboxing. I doubt that would be better.

Saying Linus uses something is just appeal to authority by the way.

I was giving Linus as an example of a member of the Linux community, and a particularly prominent one at that. There are many indicators that Fedora is well regarded, and that is just one of them.

you either adopt them or it becomes increasingly difficult to run software on your distro.

Arguably, systemd made it easier to run software on Linux. The standardization made it easier for devs to write software that worked across distros. Devs didn’t have to fight fragmentation in the lower levels and could focus on building platforms on top like Flatpak, which in turn led to even more software and apps available on Linux. It’s way easier to find and run software than a few years ago.

I’m guessing what you were trying to say is that it’s harder to find and run software on Linux that doesn’t use systemd. That’s fair. Just like it’s hard to find apps nowadays that don’t use web technology, and require something like Electron or Firefox to run. But if we think of systemd as a platform (though I think it’s more complicated than that), does it go against the ideals of Linux?

The fundamental Unix principle is having small programs that do a single thing well and that can be composed together

First off, I know you didn’t say this but I want to just clarify: software principles are different from community ideals. Software principles are a means to an end. And they are often broken. Modular design is hard to get right. Microservices often end up messier than the monolithic approach. Ultimately it’s a balance. And strategy plays into this too. If monolithic design allows faster iteration, then even if it gets replaced with modular design later, you can use the lessons learned during those iterations to make the modular design.

It’s possible that someday Redhat tries to weaponize systemd and it ends up holding Linux back until we can replace it. But I doubt it. If you look at the recent backlash that Fedora and Firefox has gotten for AI, you can see that the Linux community is pretty vocal and active about their ideals.

I’m not sure if the principles have been gutted like you say. Fedora, for example, uses systemd, and is supported by the commercial RedHat. And yet it is well regarded in the Linux community, and has firmly stuck to open source and pro-privacy principles. They foster diversity too, like the Fedora Atomic and Universal Blue projects, which make it easy to fork distros and create new ones. Not to mention, Linus Torvalds uses Fedora.

One could say that Linux is already growing at its own pace. There are some that wish it would move slower, some that wish it would move faster. systemd wasn’t forced on distros. in fact Ubuntu fought it for years, since it was created by their competitor after all. Yet Ubuntu still adopted it in the end, so it must have been worth it.

The way I see it, back in the day, Linux was too fragmented in some areas, and at the same time lacking isolation in others. Systemd standardized and addressed the fragmentation, while containers introduced isolation where needed. The lines are being re-drawn. But I don’t think the principles of Linux were compromised that much.

Well one reason why adoption matters is network effects. Increased Linux popularity, means that more developers will develop for Linux. At a broader level it means that the ideology and principles of the Linux community, like software freedom and privacy, can produce quality results and products for the masses. That brings more power for the Linux community, and more adoption of their principles.

On the flipside, if the base Linux experience is mediocre, then nobody will bother developing apps and extensions for it.

If you are completely happy with Linux the way it is now, then that adoption probably doesn’t mean a lot. But I personally think there’s a ton more that can be done in the Linux and privacy world