While I’m a big fan of Vim, it’s definitely not for everyone.

I spend about half of my writing time in VSCodium, which is a community-based release of Microsoft’s open source VS Code editor. There are several markdown, grammar, and focus-oriented plugins for the platform, and you can pretty much shape it into whatever kind of editor you want.

I use VSCodium for the vast majority of my personal notes, technical writing, and project documentation (nearly all of which are written in markdown format).

VSCodium on the desktop, and Markor on Android. I write everything in markdown, and VSCodium is already where I spend half my time editing and writing code, so it was an easy choice. I also use Vim for quick one-offs, especially if I’m already working on a project with it.

Like others here, I also use Syncthing to keep my notes synced between home server, remote clients, and mobile devices.

Manual password entry. I feel that any other method offers insufficient security.

For my desktops, this means interactive decryption before the OS loads. For my servers, only the data drives are encrypted, and I decrypt them manually over SSH whenever a reboot is needed (kernel updates, etc.).

No, it isn’t. I’ve used many Android phones over the years and none have ever defaulted to storing contacts on the SIM. SIM storage is very rudimentary, and you’d have to go out of your way to make use of it.

I won’t pretend to know how tightly integrated the keyboard is within the Android OS, but given the interoperability between app and keyboard it seems likely that vulnerabilities could be leveraged to gain malicious access to the clipboard and other sensitive data.

I have a Paperwhite myself, but from what I’ve read the Oasis works just as well via USB and is equally compatible with Calibre. The experience is pretty much plug-n-play after the initial setup wizard.

As long as you don’t need audiobooks on it, you can essentially erase your wifi credentials, turn off wifi, and manage your ebooks through USB and something like Calibre.

The Kindle OS will continue to collect and store all sorts of telemetry, and will upload it later if you ever reconnect the device to the internet. Just something to consider.

Normally, I would just suggest avoiding Kindles but, like me, you already have the device so might as well use it.

It seems that BT 5.3 in USB format is a challenge to find, let alone support under Linux. If 5.0 is acceptable, the TP Link UB500 uses an RTL8761B chipset which has been supported since around kernel 5.16.

I have a few UB500 and UB400 adapters and both have worked OOTB without issue under Fedora.

Not crazy at all. Came here to say the same thing. My vote would be to pick a distro that’ll let you focus on the schoolwork. Debian, Fedora, Ubuntu, or even just Linux Mint.

Yeah, it definitely sounds like you’ve got the right approach already. If you can manage your data within the lower storage capacities, I think you’ll appreciate the reduced noise and power consumption of the SSDs.

My home server is a NUC inside an Akasa Turing fanless case with an 8TB Samsung 870 QVO SSD for my file shares. Works great and it’s completely silent.

It should go without saying that routine, off-site backups are an important element of server administration, regardless of drive type. Mine are completed monthly, and critical data (docs, keepass databases, etc.) is also synced across multiple devices using Syncthing.

Sounds good. I don’t think the automatic background updates are enabled by default, at least they weren’t when I last installed it. To enable:

1. Edit /etc/rpm-ostreed.conf and set AutomaticUpdatePolicy=stage
2. Reload system service: rpm-ostree reload
3. Enable the timer daemon: systemctl enable rpm-ostreed-automatic.timer --now

Also, consider disabling GNOME Software’s management of flatpaks with the following:

rpm-ostree override remove gnome-software-rpm-ostree

The flatpaks will continue to be updated by the backend system, but you’ll no longer have to deal with the sluggish frontend UI to keep things up to date.

Do you have to watch a loading screen while system updates are applied like on regular Fedora or is it in the background?

The image is downloaded and staged in the background of the active session. Upon reboot, the session seamlessly defaults to the staged image. For flatpaks, the updates happen immediately and without the need for a reboot.

On flathub.org there’s a blue checkmark for apps maintained by the devs

Aha, that must be one of the newer features implemented from the beta portal they’d been working on. I’m glad to hear it, and overall I hope to see more official upstream devs come on board with the platform (Signal, I’m looking at you).

Thanks for clarifying. I recalled seeing something about 720p caps for certain streaming services when using non-DRM platforms, but I wasn’t sure which.

A kodi distro, such as LibreElec would be my vote, but I don’t believe it does streaming services very well, if at all.

I am so done with streaming services.The local library has more TV and films than I’ll ever have the time or inkling to actually watch.

Yes and yes.

I’ve been running Fedora Silverblue on nearly all of my PCs for about a year now and overall it’s been great.

• Automatic and unobtrusive updates for the core OS and user apps (everything happens in the background without interaction; flatpak updates are applied immediately, and OS updates are applied at next boot)
• I can choose to apply many core updates immediately, but rarely do
• Atomic OS updates means that everything must be installed successfully or none of the OS updates are applied, which prevents a partially updated system
• Being an image-based distro, I can and do easily rebase to Fedora’s test/beta/remix releases, and just as easily rollback, or run both stable and beta releases side by side for testing purposes
• Being image-based means there’s no chance of orphaned packages or library files being left behind after an update, resulting in a cleaner system over time
• In the event that anything does go sideways after a system update (hasn’t happened yet), I can easily rollback to the previous version at boot

Some elements not unique to Silverblue but part of its common workflow:

• Distrobox/toolbox allow you to run any other distro as a container, and then use that distro’s apps as if they were native to your host system; this includes systemd services, locally installed RPMs, debs, etc.; I use distrobox to keep most of my dev workflow within my preferred Archlinux environment
• Flatpaks are the FOSS community’s answer to Ubuntu’s Snaps, providing universal 1-click installation of sandboxed user apps (mostly GUI based); Firefox, Steam, VLC, and thousands of other apps are available to users, all without the need for root access

My only complaints about Silverblue are more to do with how Flatpaks work right now, such as:

• Drag & drop doesn’t work between apps, at least not for the apps I’ve attempted to use; for example, dragging a pic into a chat window for sharing; instead, I have to browse to and select the image from within the chat app
• Firefox won’t open a link clicked within Thunderbird unless the browser is already open, otherwise it just opens a blank tab
• Many flatpak apps are maintained by unofficial volunteers, and this isn’t always clear on Flathub; I view this as a security risk and would prefer to see a flag or warning of some kind when a flatpak is not maintained by the official upstream developer

That said, I’m confident that these issues will be addressed over time. The platform has already come a long way these past couple of years and now that the KDE and GNOME teams are collaborating for it, things will only get better.

Like I said though, overall Silverblue has been a really great user experience, and as a nearly 20-year Linux veteran it has really changed the way I view computing.

Flatpak apps will use the same dotfiles as apps installed via traditional methods, however the storage location will likely be different. Most dotfiles will be contained within their respective flatpak app directory under ~/.var, so you can cherry pick which settings you want to bring over.

That still wouldn’t answer their dilemma of older versioning of packages, unless they went to Sid.

The bottom line is that GrapheneOS is the most security-focused mobile operating system available, and the Google Pixel is pretty well the only mainstream phone with an unlockable bootloader.

If Alphabet were to ever lock down the Pixel’s bootloader, the GOS devs would undoubtedly jump ship to a lesser available platform in order to continue the project. But until then, no other hardware comes close with respect to embedded security.