I’m currently on Arch, but my first distro was Linux Mint. Linux Mint eased my transition into the Linux world, as it looked and behaved almost the same as Windows. You can avoid terminal commands completely thanks to the GUI apps that the Mint team includes for updating, installing, and removing packages.

I switched to Arch because one of the benefits of Arch is that it forces you to become familiar with the various different components that make up a Linux distro. When you install Mint, pretty much everything is included out of the box. You may have to install a few proprietary drivers here and there, depending on your HW config, but overall, you get everything you need to start using your computer. You don’t have to concern yourself with a lot of things. Arch is different. Even with the archinstall command that you can use to simplify the installation process, you still have much to do post-install. Audio drivers, package manager, Bluetooth, productivity apps, customization options, WiFi drivers, to name a few. And even after that, when you start daily driving Arch, you still may encounter issues that would require you to do some troubleshooting via reading the Arch Wiki or looking for similar problems on Arch forums. It can be a headache at times, but I personally feel it’s worth it.

I don’t think this should surprise anyone, given the new CEO they got and the announcement that was made immediately afterwards, followed by the layoffs. Fortunately, there are Firefox forks that we can switch to as a form of protest, provided that the forks keep these changes out of their codebases.

One thing I predict happening is that this move by Mozilla could spur more activities for the Firefox Forks. It would be a good opportunity for the developers of Mull, Librewolf, and Waterfox to think of ways to make their respective browsers stand out or be unique. Maybe we can one day see an Android version of Librewolf or a new web engine get developed in response to all this mess. Just a thought, of course.

I have been using Librewolf for several months now, and I am quite happy with it. In terms of user privacy, Librewolf by default has some strict settings enabled, like Resist Fingerprinting. Resist Fingerprinting does cause some minor problems, like incorrect timezones, but there is a workaround, as stated on the Librewolf website.

According to the Librewolf documentation, fingerprinting can be turned off, but they recommend adding the Canvas Blocker extension in its place. That is my current setup, as I didn’t like that websites in Librewolf couldn’t get the correct time and time zone for me.

Here’s the direct quote from the Librewolf documentation:

If you don’t like the downsides of RFP, or you are not concerned about fingerprinting, you can disable RFP in the LibreWolf settings, or in your overrides. In that case consider using an extension like CanvasBlocker to retain at least a minimum amount of fingerprinting protection.

Can they just focus on the browser? I really don’t need the AI stuff.

I think I’ll just stick with Mastodon and Lemmy.

How was CalyxOS overall? Are there some things that CalyxOS does better than GrapheneOS?

Yeah, here’s the Mastodon post announcing Android Auto implementation:

https://grapheneos.social/@GrapheneOS/111665498981590978

When I tried to set up the Remote Key for my car, it said I was using a version of Android that was not compatible, and thus, it couldn’t set up the remote digital key. In your case, did you adjust any settings to make NFC work?

Um…really? I don’t think so!

Perhaps you can tell me why you recommend GrapheneOS over Calyx.

Why does it not work? And, is there an alternative?