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Cake day: June 15th, 2023

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  • What bug? It’s super easy to do this in an app that already has access to your microphone, like Whatsapp, then extract only keywords from conversations and send them to Meta packed as innocuous numeric codes piggybacking on the overhead of encrypted connections.

    A single byte here and there is all you need to know people were talking about cats, or perfume, or shoes etc.

    Whatsapp protocol, app and servers are closed source, and Meta apps will download and compile native code upon installation, which escapes normal JVM restrictions and does God knows what.

    On certain brands of phones (like Samsung) Meta apps come with a manufacturer-preinstalled system stub that can do pretty much whatever it wants, but is typically used to elevate the rights of Meta apps that were installed via normal means and to collect information from them as well as any app that’s running ads from Meta.

    And this is a company that’s a third party to the Android ecosystem — it’s a lot easier for Google themselves, who are datamining the shit out of everything you do on a phone, from second-by-second location to email. And Meta is datamining the shit out of absolutely everything you put on Facebook and Instagram, in spite of any fines and sanctions. And Microsoft are datamining the shit out of everything you do on your PC and they’re openly pushing Recall and Copilot and have been pushing Cortana for so long.

    What do you think Cortana and OK Google were listening for?.Hell, Amazon and Google were both caught storing recordings of people’s conversations in the beginning, before they started hiding it better.

    So you’re being watched in every way possible in every single thing you do that touches any technology from these companies, we have countless documented instances of them breaking privacy in heinous ways like giving up people to authoritarian governments and to anti-abortion governments in the US and so on…

    …and you’re seriously wondering if they’re snooping on your conversations? They have every means at their disposal, they’re using it every second, and you’re wondering if they’re doing that too?

    Why wouldn’t they? It’s obvious that we live in a world where it’s ok to ask forgiveness (and you’ll get a slap on the wrist, if that) rather than permission. What would possibly compel them to not do it?

    Consequences? What consequences? We already know for a fact they spy on so much stuff and we keep using their tech. There are no consequences.


  • How long have you been using each of them? In my years-long experience it’s been the exact opposite. Manjaro goes out of its way to not break anything and offers safety measures out of the box to recover if something should break. Arch doesn’t care, it introduces breaking changes all the time and expects its users to be able to cope with them.

    They target very different types of users and have very different goals. Manjaro explicitly tries to be stable and user-friendly whereas Arch exclusively caters to advanced users and aims to be customizable above all.

    You can achieve the same with Arch that you get out of the box with Manjaro but it’s not there by default – because that’s not something a lot of Arch users are seeking.

    For a normal user, you probably won’t notice that technically manjaro is not arch and EOS is.

    What’s a “normal” user? On Linux you get all sorts. But you will most definitely notice a difference between daily driving Manjaro vs driving Arch.


  • lemmyvore@feddit.nltoLinux@lemmy.mlGoldilocks distro?
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    9 days ago

    All distributions make mistakes. It’s a complex job. Debian stable had a local root elevation exploit on for a while a couple of months ago and nobody batted an eye. People would have a field day if that happened to Manjaro.

    It’s a double standard borne out of the resentment of a vocal minority and that sucks. The Linux community wastes so much energy on these pointless feuds. (And then they wonder why there’s never the year of the Linux desktop…) Linux and FOSS are not about treating user share as a zero sum game but unfortunately there are people who can only think in terms of “if you use another distro you’re dumb and I must ridicule you”.

    It’s an especially narrow-minded take with distros like Manjaro, which is different enough from Arch that its users were never going to use Arch anyway.


  • First of all would be the fact that Endeavour is basically just an installer. It should have been an alternative offered by Arch alongside archinstall. I know it also offers some desktop setup but IMO that’s too little to qualify as a distro. You can replicate looks and themes fairly easily. Might as well install Arch.

    …but I don’t want Arch because I’m at a point where I want my desktop distro to be boring and predictable, so it enables me to focus on other things. Arch needs more maintenance than I’m willing to put in. But I also want a rolling distro and having recent-enough packages.

    Manjaro is a unique combination of rolling and stability. It’s that combo that’s the main factor but I’d be lying if I didn’t say I enjoy not having to ever think about the graphics drivers, or about the kernel, and it’s nice to have a graphical package manager.

    As a sidenote, Garuda goes the extra mile and adds similar quality-of-life tools, while staying true to Arch repos. I think Garuda should get the publicity as an actual alternative in-between Arch and Manjaro, rather than Endeavour.





  • How did it crash?

    Manjaro is a very opinionated distro and has a certain way of doing things. There’s also a lot of bad advice online that tells you to do exactly the things that will break it. Doing things like using an experimental kernel, switching to unstable branch, using Arch repos, installing graphical drivers outside its driver tool, installing critical packages from AUR, using Arch-specific config commands and so on.

    Manjaro will work perfectly if you let it work the way it was designed, but lots of people don’t. Those people would be much better off using Arch or one of the Arch derivates that stay true to the way Arch does things.

    Messing with Manjaro then complaining “it broke” is like using a toothbrush to slice bread and complaining it’s not working. Well, it’s the wrong tool for what you wanted, of course it won’t work.


  • Manjaro is the only distro I’ve tried whose live image worked flawlessly, out of the box, and did everything I could think of, first try.

    Granted this was 5 years ago when I set down to find an alternative to Ubuntu. Maybe today there are more distros that can do that.

    At the time I tried all the usual suspects that are supposed to provide a user-friendly, gamer-friendly desktop experience and they all came short — except one.

    That sold me. And it was surprising because I didn’t really expect to find such a distro, I was just thinking I will make a list of what doesn’t work out of the box on each, and pick the one with the least stuff. I didn’t expect a distro to have no list.



  • lemmyvore@feddit.nltoLinux@lemmy.mlGoldilocks distro?
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    10 days ago

    If you’re lazy (which I take to mean you like low maintenance) and haven’t tried a rolling release distro, you need to try Manjaro. It’s downstream of Arch (like Mint vs Debian) but with a lot of QoL improvements that take the edge off.

    It’s"Goldilocks" for me because it’s rolling and has recent packages but also very low maintenance. I was sick of 3rd-party repo incompatibilies and update issues on Ubuntu.

    It’s a curated take on Arch in that it sources packages from Arch but holds them back until they’re in a decent shape. Recent example was the Plasma 6 which they’ve held back a couple of months until most bugs had been cleared, but normally they release packages on a 2 week cycle.

    It works out of the box, keeps working indefinitely (5 years going for me), and they have integrated system snapshots if you use BTRFS for root, just in case (automatically takes snapshots before every update, which you can restore from Grub). Never had to use a snapshot (did it only once to see if it works).

    Limitations of Manjaro compared to Arch:

    • Not as bleeding edge due to holding packages for a while.
    • You have to stick to their way of doing stuff, like their tools for graphics drivers and kernel management.
    • You have to stick to a LTS kernel or at least keep one installed as backup at all times.
    • It won’t change your kernel major version for you, ever. Some people see this as a disadvantage, personally I greatly prefer it.
    • You have to stick to their stable package repo. If you use their unstable/testing repos all bets are off (which is not going to be news to someone familiar with Debian).
    • You get access to the AUR but the usual warnings apply since AUR is even wilder than Sid. Some people say they’ve ran into trouble installing some AUR packages on Manjaro due to missing dependencies. It’s never happened to me but I can see how it could happen due to the package delay.
    • You can’t say “I use Arch btw”. Arch fans tend to hate Manjaro because they see its limitations and hand-holding as antithetical to Arch’s goals.

    Regarding that last point, there’s a very vocal minority that will smear Manjaro any chance they get All I can say is, try it for yourself.


  • lemmyvore@feddit.nltoSelfhosted@lemmy.worldWeb printing
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    13 days ago

    You don’t have to install drivers or CUPS on client devices. Linux and Android support IPP out of the box. Just make sure your CUPS on the server is multicasting to the LAN.

    You may need to install Avahi on the server if it’s not already (that’s what does the actual multicasting). The printer(s) should then auto magically appear in the print dialogs on apps on Linux clients and in the printer service on Android.

    On Linux it may take a few seconds to appear after you turn it on and may not appear when it’s off. On Android it shows up anyways as long as the CUPS server is on.







  • You should be able to export both contacts and texts if the backup app is given contacts permission and to be set as the text app temporarily.

    Not sure about the text multimedia. If it’s in the system text database it can be exported, if the Messages app has it in its private data then tough luck.

    Well you can probably still back it up to Google.