I looked at the Fairphone. Would love to go that route, but unfortunately the price is too high for now (and no headphone jack, lol). Maybe in the future it’ll drop, we’ll see.

Thanks for the reply! The more I read about Asus being scummy the less I want to get the zenfone.

Re: Pixel 9 pro, I figured I should aim for the latest one so I can get the longest time out of it. I see a few different refurbs on ebay for $460-$560 USD. Unlocked ones are ~$570. Generally a pretty cheap way to get decent phones.

Pixel 3a XL. It’s served me well but is a few years outside of updates now.

I’m thinking that a pixel is probably the best bet. Looking into the best way to mod a headphone jack onto it lol.

Nice!

Being already established, you have a few advantages over the newbies. You know about how a few different instances federate and work, and you know whether or not you like your instance.

Recommend your instance. Or if you wouldn’t, whether because it’s niche or doesn’t work well in general, recommend a generic instance, even if it is .world, because it will probably work and give a good experience.

Mixed environment, bunch of windows servers and a bunch of Linux servers. I currently run NixOS on my company owned Framework laptop, with the caveat that I have to deal with or work around any weirdness that comes up.

I’ve been wanting for a while now to fix up my config (weird sleep waking issues, broken hibernate, implement full disk encryption) or maybe switch to Fedora. Just haven’t had the time.

Remmina is great for RDP, OnlyOffice preserves Microsoft office formatting well, KDE’s network manager has working VPN connections for Cisco and Palo Alto, and I do a lot from the browser (email, O365 admin,etc).

There is friction, though. As mentioned the sleep issues. Never fun getting to a site and finding a hot, dead laptop in my bag because it decided to wake up and not go back to sleep.

For things that HAVE to be done in Windows I have a VM I haven’t powered on in a months or two, and a “tech” server to rdp to with more network access.

I’d also like to get more familiar with Nix. I can handle system settings and packages from the Nix repositories, but packaging my own software is something I’d like to learn (software and printer drivers for Ubuntu/fedora, etc).

Yeah, shame on him for going out of his way to provide helpful information for people, as a direct response to someone who asked for it!

Not sure how current it is, but LinuxBBQ has a live CD (Cream) with a bunch of WMs installed that you can easily switch between.