Get an HDMI-CEC adapter, have your machine boot straight into big picture mode and pin Plex/jellyfin to your favorites so its the first thing you see.

Alternatively, get a Chromecast and only switch to that HDMI for media, and leave the PC for gaming. Heck, if CEC works all right in both ways, you might be able to navigate on your PC with the Chromecast remote.

I’m definitely not a fan of Google myself, but I can’t deny the ease of use for less savvy ppl to just press “ON” on the little white remote and have it turn on the TV, switch to the correct input and turn on the soundbar.

If you feel particularly nerdy and love stats and graphs, here’s a rabbit hole for you

https://bkbilly.gitbook.io/lnxlink

Recently had to help a relative who still uses windows, so here’s a freebie from Linux:

You can use super + number to launch any pinned program on the taskbar. For example let’s say you have your browser right of the start button and file explorer on the next spot right, pressing super+1 launches the browser and super+2 the explorer

Edit: super = windows logo key

I kinda use most of proton’s stuff. Also I’m not on the us so no idea what the second part means

Old school user here, back in 2005ish Ubuntu was straightforward, even had “wubi” to install it as a windows app, the site was friendly and easy to navigate (compared to Debian’s). Another big plus, they shipped the distro CDs for free worldwide, which was a big deal while I was stuck on a shitty ADSL connection that had constant drops.

Mint came a bit later and the big plus was OOTB codecs support. Back in the day that was one of the first walls most users came across, while Ubuntu pushed for a paid mp3 codec (fluendo?) Mint had most audio and video codecs working right after setup.

The UI wasn’t that different between the two, considering Ubuntu was running gnome2 (what mate immitates nowadays)

They do for some time now, at least on both workstation and silverblue you get prompted on the first boot and a reminder after a while on gnome-software

It’s on my to-research list. I heard some rumblings that tailscale might go IPO. Not that’s bad by itself but I have been burned by stuff like that leaving me stranded once they “pivot their operations to maximize investor satisfaction” (aka enshittification)

Thats what Felix said, im personally a fan of OrganicMaps

Articles too much time too, so I made you this

• Google bad, tracking sucks
• Android -> graphene
• Keep -> joplin
• Docs -> nextcloud
• Gmail -> proton
• GMaps -> car GPS
• Tailscale
• Selfhosted on SteamDeck

Best I can offer is a ruby icon

Jellyfin user here, glad I dodged the bullet when I had to pick between it and plex.

Tl;dr you want something like plex to:

• manage your media files for you
• get metadata for extra features (eg. show me similar movies, select an actor from the cast and see all your media with that actor, etc)
• track your watch progress
• play on several devices (tv, mobile, pcs consoles)
• transcode media to a compatible format for your client device
• share your media library with your family
• get notified of related media being released (new season of a show or new movie onba series)

And the biggest one for me

• tidy up ripped dvd/br movie collection, download missing CC or subtitles
• create a self-hosted alternative to shitty subscription services

Have you tried Synching? If you only need transferring files back and forth and no version control or snapshot-like backups, that might be even simpler

Tried OCIS a while back and its way faster than NC syncing files, even the initial sync was so fast I didn’t trust it was fully done (but it was).

That being said, OCIS is missing several key features I daily use: namely proper DAV support (contacts, calendar, todo, journal, etc) as well as integrations for stuff like SeedVault for mobile backups.

Here’s an idea: on your android device use something like Insular to create a work profile, that way you get its own VPN slot, add your selfhosted-related apps there along with Tailscale. You can keep ProtonVPN on for your other apps, while using TS for your “LAN away from home” stuff. Since Tailscale already encrypts all traffic, you don’t have to worry about HTTPS, certs, et al.

Not even that, fedora has added for a few versions codecs and proprietary stuff as opt-in “third party repos” during user account creation.

Just put bazzite and enjoy, it takes away all the tinkering

Oh no, don’t take it as “don’t reinvent the wheel”! I meant it in the true sense that sometimes we spent so much effort and focus building something, just to post about it somewhere and getting a reply “Oh nice, it’s exactly like X project!”.

Currently I’m running NextCloud on prem, so DavX5 and JTXBoard cover most of my note taking and todo tasks, and I guess one could deploy the server-side encryption module on a NextCloud AIO on a VPS and keep everything (probably) safe and private. I’m kinda lazy too, that’s why I liked the hands-off maintenance of NC-AIO. I get notifications to update stuff, and I get regular security audits from NC itself.

BTW, never take that “doing stuff already done” is in detriment of helping FOSS projects. There are tons of examples of people randomly tinkering around and accidentally finding some huge fix for other projects. Off the top of my head, some weeb wanted to play Nier Automata at decent framerates on wine and a few years later, here we are with DXVK and all the proton stuff making most stuff playable!

Really interested on seeing this, although if I could make a suggestion, start by scouting around and see if you can adapt FOSS apps, maybe fork them and add/remove features to please your objectives and tastes.

Although I’m eager to see these through, I like projects like murena (/e/OS) that cobble together good Foss projects into a single cohesive ecosystem (without making the word ecosystem gross and vendor locked in like in most cases)

Cut them some slack?! They’ve got all the slack already!

Having had similar hardware and reading about your preferences let me throw some cents in the hat:

Sim stuff runs mostly ootb. I don’t have a fancy rig, but both my G29 and x52 pro work perfectly fine. At most, some games will map the axis wrong, but that’s easily fixable (eg. AMS2 swaps clutch and brakes and inverts all axis). The insullary apps such as TrackIR and controller stuff is already available, although not official. There’s Oversteer for wheels and GX52 for hotas.

I don’t have a TrackIR device but I’ve used FacetrackNoIR with the neuralnet face tracker and besides needing a bit of background lighting, it woked fine.

It’s not all perfect and depending on the games, it might need some tinkering. For example Mechwarrior 5 refuses to work properly with my hotas, and when I had a weaker CPU, Beam.ng was unusable with traffic/opponents. Some older titles are a pain to set up, like the older WRC games that had some obscure config files for the mappings. The upside is that you can back up your “fake windows C:” (aka as compatdata folder) once you got everything the way you like it.

I mostly do office type stuff and vector graphics along with CNC, and the proprietary software I need runs 90% fine on wine/bottles, so I haven’t had much of any blocker issues with work stuff.

I’ve been running Linux way before proton was a thing, and I’m really happy about how things are moving nowadays. I got used to the gnome workflow and now any other OS feels cumbersome and clunky, but YMMV.

TL; DR:

• PRO: most sim stuff just works
• CON: some games perform a bit worse
• PRO: most hardware runs OOTB and popular gear have apps for setup and options
• CON: those are unofficial and might not support all bells and whistles
• CON: some games are finnicky to set up, especially with external software addons (eg crewchief, ED companion, TrackIR)
• PRO: you can save your games prefix so all that work is portable/reproducible
• most office stuff is more than adequate for everyday work.

Unless the crook happens to be extremely nerdy or its law enforcement, already being a Linux formatted partition feels it should be enough for a rando breaking in and stealing a computer.

That being said, something like a PiKVM connected to your server (and Tailscale) could let you enable both UEFI/boot password and propt for LUKS decryption upon boot.