Thanks, that looks a little better, but still missing things like sending keystrokes to non-active windows. (Also, I’m on Mate desktop on most my computers.)

I just need xdotool. ydotool is missing almost everything. I don’t need programs sandboxed from each other. I don’t need that multi-DPI stuff (200% scaling works fine in X). Wayland doesn’t provide any features I’m missing.

I have self hosted my email since 2006. I gave up on self hosting outgoing mail in 2021, but I still keep the server up for incoming mail, and still set up throwaway accounts on there.

The hard part of hosting email is getting Google and Microsoft to accept outgoing mail. Tons of businesses that do not have visibly outlook .com or gmail .com addresses are still hosted by those servers.

I had SPF, DKIM, and a static datacenter IP address with no reputation problems. I still couldn’t get through to Microsoft, not even in people’s junk mail directory, until they manually whitelisted my address. Microsoft didn’t allow them to whitelist a whole domain. Google was a little easier, but they added new demands monthly.

In 2025, I can’t get reliable delivery to gmail .com addresses even sending from a hotmail .com address in the outlook .com web interface.

I got GOG Galaxy working in Steam, through Proton, as an “Add a non-Steam Game”. I’ll have to try Heroic Launcher.

Not sure how much you’re paying for your VPN, but a virtual private server can be had for about $5 per month. You’ll get a real IPv4 address just for you, so you won’t have to use non-standard port numbers. (You can also use the VPS as a self-hosted VPN or proxy.)

$5 per month doesn’t get you much processing power, but it gets you plenty of bandwidth. You could self-host your server on your home computer, and reverse-proxy through your NAT using the VPS.

Cloudflare has IP banned me before for no reason (no proxy, no VPN, residential ISP with no bot traffic). They’ve switched their captcha system a few times, and some years it’s easy, some years it’s impossible.

killall -u 1001

I think top has a way to do it interactively.

Aluminum foil works. At least, I can’t receive calls or texts through it last I tried.

Get the heavy duty kind. It’s not any more conductive, but is more durable against tearing.

Note that a gap in your phone’s tracking data can look suspicious at times. Sometimes it’s less suspicious to leave your phone at home.

How do you add a custom service to systemd? Let’s say /usr/local/sbin/foobar . I can never seem to get it to work, but can do it easily in sysvinit.

sgt-puzzles. Simon Tatham’s Portable Puzzle collection.

Contains a bunch of simple puzzles, of the minesweeper and sudoku style. Loopy is my favorite.

Available for Linux, Windows, MacOS, Android, and anything with a web browser and a mouse. Packaged in Debian and F-droid, and probably many other places.

I like it for time wasting in lines at the DMV, for a low-stakes game when anxious, and for falling asleep.

Unfortunately, I think most platforms for novels allow AI, so they end up full of AI trash.

Instead of using a platform, try looking up authors you’ve read before and liked. Then see where they publish. Or try and find a fandom for the genre you like, and ask humans for recommendations

I’ve never heard anyone say that Flatpaks could result in losing access to the terminal.

My only problem with Flatpaks are the lack of digital signature, neither from the repository nor the uploader. Other major package managers do use digital signatures, and Flatpaks should too.

OBS worked pretty well for me last time I used it, using the basic package Debian provided.

Sure, here are instructions for getting Linux Mint running: https://www.linuxmint.com/download.php

These instructions are for creating a USB flash drive that functions as both a live environment or an installer. If you don’t want to install it yet, this allows you to try it out while booting just from the flash drive, without modifying your hard drive at all.

First choice: 292 K

Second choice: 9 C

If we’re talking only outdoor temperature, third choice is 100 F, because air conditioning exists, and my peppers would thrive.

If it’s ambient indoor temperature too, then I pick 9 F, which is unpleasant, but survivable. At 100 F indoors, you will be constantly sweating for the rest of your life.

Sorry if it wasn’t obvious, I’m using sysvinit.

My favorite is Debian, with systemd uninstalled. At this point, you can’t install Debian without systemd, but you can uninstall systemd after OS installation.

It used to be that most desktop environments in Debian depended on libpam-systemd, which depended on systemd and systemd-sysv. More recently, desktop environments just depend on libpam-elogind and elogind which is only part of systemd, and allows you to use sysvinit.

I prefer sysvinit mainly because I find it easier to create custom services out of my own programs. My success rate at doing this in systemd is 1/3, and in sysvinit about 10/10.

I also had a problem where a Debian-based embedded system had some kind of broken NTP client running on startup, and due to systemd, I couldn’t figure out how to disable it. It would set the time to several years into the future, as soon as it first got a network connection on each startup.

My problem with that theme is that it doesn’t highlight any buttons. I believe all buttons should have borders, especially the ones the titlebar. This helps distinguish a noninteractive label from an interactive clickable button.

This survey doesn’t distinguish between levels of cloud service provider, so I was a little confused.

Virtual private servers, cloud virtual servers (like AWS), cloud-based software where you provide code or a program and the cloud system runs it on a server of its choosing, and cloud-based systems where someone else provides the software (like Google Docs).

I assume bash scripts using jpegtopnm | pnmtopng are also in the neutral good category (from Netpbm).