I run Silverblue on 2 devices (my main computer and laptop) for half a year. It works and I didn’t have any major issues with it. Though as you might have experienced with other immutable distros, some things like configuring gdm might be a bit more work. But for most things there is a flatpak. The only software that couldn’t be installed that wat was my vpn.

If you want to try out something new, NixOS or Guix might be more up your alley

That’s funny since I didn’t even know what Linux was when I started my CS education, nor that there were so many services you could host yourself. I was egged on to try Linux and (eventually) get a small homelab by my uni friends, who were probably more like you

I have my academic bachelors in CS and I’m doing a civil engineering masters on the CS track. So I’m the opposite of your target audience, but I did want to mention something.

Yes there are some fairly technical things like cryptography, natural language processing, and compression algorithms where you will need a good understanding of mathematical subjects like linear algebra, statistics, and group theory.

But apart from subjects like that, you can definitely learn most of what we did at the same pace, or even faster (and even then, something being difficult doesn’t mean it’s impossible to learn). You can easily find good resources online to learn languages from Haskell to C. Nobody is stopping you from buying books that are used as course material. Same goes for networking.

Saying all that, I never even learned to work with containers or VMs as part of a uni course. Most of the stuff we learn is in the realm of theoretical computer science. So I probably learned a lot about self hosting the same way you did: the internet and some friends.

Oh that’s nice. I’ll give beeper a spin then as well, thanks! You too daytonah!

Oh don’t you need a Google account to get the apks on Aurora?

Mainly because it’s really difficult to make a Google account when they suspect you’re a bot.

A fair amount of smaller businesses in Belgium also primarily use Whatsapp.

A VM is difficult for me since I only have a spare quad core laptop from almost a decade ago. So I’m sceptical on whether it will be able to virtualise an OS on top. And the bridges are hosted on a Zimablade. So I have my doubts there as well. Though I can definitely give it a spin in my free time, you never know.

I do have my main computer where I do run VMs often, but I doubt my partner will be fine running that noisy thing overnight though.

Ideally I would be running an iMessage bridge like you’re suggesting. Unfortunately I don’t have time to get it to work on my iPhone since the maumium docs mention it’s possible, but haven’t made a guide for it.

I’ll definitely keep the VM thing in mind if I ever decide to replace the Zimablade. I doubt my family will let go of their Apple devices any time soon anyway.

Thanks, I’ve really been appreciating everyones ideas here!

Actually our setup isn’t that different. I do have everything running behind Mullvad, including my server with the bridge on it. I also have a seperate, rarely used phone number. I don’t have Whatsapp on my GOS device though

A bit off topic but the way you’re writing this post makes me feel old, and I’m in my low 20s

I am mad I didn’t get the summer shrimpin role (I barely use DIscord)

Yes, my family sent me important messages on Signal for the couple of months we used it, but that was it. The issue lied with the other kinds of messages that I just didn’t receive anymore. I’m happy enough we got on a platform that is at the very least e2ee and where those other kinds chats still continue. Though I’m aware that metadata is being shared that wouldn’t be if we used Signal.

Haha. Yeah we have a seperate “memechat” for non-serious stuff (which went to iMessage in that Signal period) so I just have that one automatically muted on select hours of the day.

I do have a tablet I use as a glorified recipe book. So that might just do it. Thanks, you’ve been a huge help!

I actually mostly use Signal. I got my family to use Signal for a while, but they just ended up sending texts I did not strictly need to see on iMessage. Hence why we eventually settled on Whatsapp

By keeping it open 24/7 do you mean that the app is actively taking screen space or is an unclosed app in the background? I hadn’t actually thought of not swiping the app away after refreshing the timer. And yeah I was looking at OpenWA as well but that’s for businesses.

Yeah I thought about using it too. The two bridges are also developed by them. I wouldn’t have minded using their app instead, but I don’t have the Play Store on my phone (I’m on GOS). They don’t offer a regularly updated apk on their site like Whatsapp does either.

Still thanks for the suggestion though!

Fair enough considering Windows also doesn’t respect you. My worst experiences were the times I accidentally clicked on “update and restart” so I just had to wait there after a long night of getting a presentation or homework done. That happened a few too many times in high school.

But I barely handle updates myself these days. I have set it to automatically* apply them live for my year on Silverblue. I have something similar for my phone updating every weekend at night considering I sleep in anyway. This post did remind me how nice it is to not have to worry (or even think) about updates.

*I do manually update between major Fedora releases. But those happen twice per year so yeah.

To to honest my Fedora install used to hang indefinitely 20% of the time I tried to shut it down. So I also became well acquainted with that solution

Yeah I get from a user’s perspective why they would like an official client. But I personally don’t believe it would attract enough new users to make maintaining a Linux version worthwhile from the firms perspective. Especially managing game compatibility on Linux seems like a nightmare. (I take this back, I was thinking about it and I haven’t had any issues with Proton for a while now.) But hey, their board probably already weighted this out before making the decision so I might just be underestimating the crowd it would attract

I can think of a couple of valid reasons someone would like to use an officially supported client, like inherent trust, ease of use, and a soft guarantee for support. But for people you’re calling supremely anti-corporation and anti-closed source it doesn’t make sense to use either. Both are owned by firms and are closed source. And if you count Steam games requiring the Steam client to run, then Steam also has DRM on all games

Using GOG Galaxy also won’t fix the game related issues people have with Heroic. Heroic pulls the same files Galaxy on Linux would. Hence if game doesn’t work, it would likely be a Wine or Proton specific issue. Heroic also automatically applies known fixes to games using Proton. So I don’t know what Galaxy could do to provide a more stable experience.

Edit: missing word (use)