i like alot of things!! so this is gonna be a mix of all that hopefully
gonna be mainly trying to learn more about security and tech stuff on here tho!
Hello world! We are Modal, a new collective born out of the local Berlin community around Linux infrastructure. We're involved in projects like GNOME, postmarketOS, p2panda, and systemd.
We organize the #BoilingTheOcean events, and work upstream on a number of difficult problems in emancipatory computing, including local-first networking, mainline Linux on phones, and platform security.
Our long-term goal: A free software platform that's competitive with the iPhone 🌈
A Planet for Guix
https://guix.gnu.org/blog/2025/planet-guix//
#guix
I've been trying to get an older Toshiba laptop to work for basic web browsing and document editing for my relative and ended up using FydeOS (Chrome OS based).
My relative is not at all tech savvy and pretty much only knows the bare minimum to navigate a computer so it had to be user friendly and modern in UI design.
I started with NixOS and KDE Plasma because its easy to configure. For them, the UI was unfamiliar in the sense that they were expecting Windows icons, etc. I filled up the desktop, renamed Libreoffice to Word, used a Windows icon pack, installed Chromium. Seemed good! It almost worked, but then there was some issue with the WiFi for them which made browsing slow, the experience took a few seconds for loading anything. The main problem was slow internet. The laptops running a Pentium, 5gb RAM, and an HDD. I could've debugged it but had heard of FydeOS being a really nice way to revive old laptops to some level of usability without needing ChromeOS with a Google account. I got FydeOS v19 for Intel legacy, installed it, with an expectation it'd run as fast as NixOS+KDE. But to my surprise it was smoother! Idk what black magic they had done. The main usecase of just browsing was snappy, WiFi worked fine. Although there didn't seem to be much user choice for offline apps. I got the Linux and Android subsystems enabled and installed the latest Libreoffice. I'm somewhat hopeful this will fit the needs of my relative! Although the whole complication of Linux files vs main filesystem may be confusing for them but it can be dealt with I think. Time will tell. I'm glad this worked because otherwise they were gonna buy a whole new laptop for just basic use when there was a capable enough system right here.
Has anyone tried to get https://www.reddit.com/r/emacs/comments/1mzml2c/feedback_directed_optimization_of_emacs_with/ working in #emacs for #guix?
The profile guided optimization part sounds pretty promising in speedup on top of IGC, I wonder what the Guix equivalent of building emacs with the clang-toolchain would be? I seem to run into errors when trying to build package object you get with (package-with-c-toolchain).
But maybe that's cause I was using a custom build of emacs. To build with clang I'm guessing the build environment variables (such as CC) would have to be changed to use clang instead of GCC, and the gcc inputs would have to be replaced with clang-toolchain inputs?
There's a nice package called https://sr.ht/~niklaseklund/detached.el/ which does this reliably locally (you just need dtach executable on the machine). It should in theory work on tramp as well but i keep running into errors. Need to debug why sometime soon but i have a feeling its cause of guix. Your mileage may vary so I'm still mentioning it!
Y'ALL Y'ALL Y'ALL!!!!
Somebody from the community - NOT part of any technical group - just a family... they came in and had an old laptop they wanted Linux installed on.
They saw the post on our town's subreddit and wanted to give their 8 year old kid a new laptop. So we installed Mint on it, gave them basic instruction and a way to get ahold of us in the future
And they went on their merry way!
Y'all!!!! It worked!!! We're installing linux on folks' computers! Bringing life to old systems and moving folks off corporate surveillance OS's!!!!
Good news! If you can, now is *still* a good time to donate for #Guix! 👇
https://guix.gnu.org/en/blog/2025/fundraising-campaign-to-sustain-gnu-guix/
Don’t use this shit. It’s terrible for the environment. It’s terrible for society. It’s unethical. And it’s actively misleading you and feeding you dogshit information designed to sound correct.
https://xoxo.zone/@KevinMarks/115417671746335624
So guix have lauched its fundraising campaign, So I urge all the #guix users to chime in and #nix users can also chime in because who wouln't want a good competitor :p, All I want is guix to flourish, More details here
https://guix.gnu.org/en/blog/2025/fundraising-campaign-to-sustain-gnu-guix/
well this is a cool project by @fishinthecalculator ! aims to combine guix, goblins, and hoot to make a yunohost-like application. https://fishinthecalculator.me/fortino.html
The most prominent invention in the century is certainly #wikipedia, right? If not convinced, this text gives a very interesting angle to how important it is:
https://pluralistic.net/2025/09/05/be-the-first-person/
by @pluralistic
I'm handing https://activitypub.rocks over to the community! And I wrote a post about it https://activitypub.rocks/news/handing-off-activitypubrocks-to-the-activitypub-community.html
I did the original design of activitypub.rocks 9 years ago and I haven't done much to keep it up to date. So the W3C SocialWG is taking over instead!
As a nice sendoff, the blogpost also includes some fun AP history, which I detail a bit in this thread too 🧵
Torrent client but you can chat with your peers
Tiny Apocalyptic Time Tip 🌐✨
If you too feel uneasy about
the state of the world,
and you too worry about losing access to one of the greatest knowledge treasure of the internet,
Know that you can download an
offline copy of Wikipedia!
Here's how 📚👇
1. Download the free and open source software Kiwix (this will be your reader): https://kiwix.org/en/applications/
2. If you want smaller versions of Wikipedia, you can download them within Kiwix.
Within the app, go to "Categories" in the menu on the left, then browse to a topic/version you want. Scroll to the bottom for Wikipedia mini, for example. Click on it then click "Download" on the right :neocat_book:
3. Once you have downloaded a database, click on "Opened" on the left > database you want to search > "Open Main Page" on the right.
4. You can use the Search field on the upper-right to find topics like on online Wikipedia! 🔍
5. If you want the full English version of Wikipedia (110GB), you might want to download it from the torrent file instead. Install a torrent client of your choice (I use Transmission).
Then, go to this page, click on "Download - 109.89 GB" blue button on the first result (size may vary overtime), then select "Torrent file": https://library.kiwix.org/#lang=eng&category=wikipedia
6. Once you have the torrent file, open it with your torrent client to start the download. This is BIG! Be patient! 📦
7. Once the download is completed, open your Wikipedia `.zim` file with Kiwix!
8. Magic! 📖✨
Extra Tip: You can download many other awesome knowledge files from the Kiwix Library! Personally, I also got the iFixit knowledge base! ⚒️ :blobcatrainbow:
@tusharhero
Thanks! I'd seen webjump in lionyx's emacs-solo config but i didn't know much on it, should give it a deeper look
@tacosandlinux_
Its action retro isn't it? They do some really cool videos, makes me think about how to use old hardware much more
I forgot about this site! I'll try using it too
