Uh… you do know that people don’t literally save a bunch of Linux ISOs, right? It’s a euphemism for collecting less legit things, like pirated media or porn.

By the time you want to install the same distro again, it’s likely that a new version will be out and you’ll want to re-download it anyway.

Why the state of the industry is shit, in a nutshell.

For any machines that are too inefficient to be worth continuing to compute with, you could at least save the power supplies for electronics projects. I’ve got some 12V addressable RGB Christmas lights being powered by an old ATX power supply, for example.

Is metasearch really the best we can do? What about YaCy, or something else more like that?

I’m absolutely serious, though: JavaScript should be considered harmful and abolished in its entirety. This is only one reason among many.

(Granted, libraries for other programming languages could have the same issue, in theory; however, programmers of most other languages don’t have a culture of adding dependencies willy-nilly to the same extent JavaScript devs seem to.)

We laugh about AI deleting all the shit, but every day there’s a new npm package ready to exfiltrate all your data, upload it to a server and encrypt your home. How do you protect yourself against that?

Yes, by not using npm either.

Pick any of the more popular ones at random; it really doesn’t matter that much.

It’s proprietary shit. If it’s being left behind, blame the megacorp that makes it, not Linux devs.

The point is, nobody gives a shit about Solaris, HP-UX, AIX, etc. anymore and your argument is stupid.

Every Unix or Unix-like OS that matters in 2025 is either switching from X11 to Wayland or never used X11 to begin with.

I still have almost no idea what PulseAudio and PipeWire even do, aside from them being two of five(!) different audio-related subsystems that any given sound problem might be related to. (The others being OSS, ALSA, and JACK, which I also don’t understand.)

Inb4 “Awesome²”

“Most Unices” haven’t been relevant for a decade or more. At this point it’s really just Linux, OS X, Android (to the extent it counts as a Unix), and BSD as an also-ran. Obviously OS X and Android don’t care about Wayland or X11 to begin with, so all you’re really saying is that BSD is getting left behind.

Those work fine in Wayland for me.

Meanwhile, my OS switched to Wayland while updating at some point and I didn’t even notice.

Home Assistant has been heavily working on that sort of functionality lately.

If you want something more portable, you may be able to get your hands on a Walmart onn. TV Box 4K (2021) and install Lineage OS on it

I got a couple of those after the LTT video about them, but still haven’t gotten around to rooting them/setting them up. Now, because I procrastinated so long, I can use LineageOS instead of the rooted stock ROM (I think?) that was being used at the time.

Thanks, kind Internet stranger!

Neat, thanks!

I’m not thrilled about the camera quality (compared to a purpose-built surveillance cam with 4k and good low-light performance) and I wish it had PoE, but damn, can’t beat that price!

(Side note: does anybody else find it weird that PoE is so uncommon and/or adds so much to the cost of these IoT dev boards? I get that normal people don’t want the hassle of running cable, but it feels like the hole in the market is bigger than it should be.)

Tell me more about your homebrew esp32 cams, please!

How you gonna get the video feed off an IP cam and onto your NVR without connecting it to your network?

You’re not seriously suggesting using old analog cameras in 2025, are you?

The exceptions are things like my phone because it’s a necessary device these days and there aren’t a lot of options for something not locked down to all hell.

Graphene is good enough, IMO.

The real problem is that getting to 99% is damn near a full-time job and the capitalist cartel actively punishes it (by only offering owner control in ‘commercial-grade’ products at huge markup, or not manufacturing such things at all and forcing you to DIY).

It’s unreasonable to expect any but the most dedicated (read: stubborn) people like us to be able to handle it; the only viable solution for the masses is to wrestle back control of the government and end regulatory capture of the FTC etc.