As a Vim/NeoVim user my number one reason is speed. There's a pretty steep learning curve, but it doesn't take long to see noticeable improvements.
Aside from terminal applications generally running faster than GUI ones, there is a tremendous amount of flexibility that it offers when it comes to actual text editing. For example, you learn how to type things like _f(vi(cfoo_f(ci(foo† which goes to the beginning of the line, finds the first open parens, selects everything inside of the parens expression, then replaces that text with "foo". After a while these kinds of inputs become second nature, and you can start using them to construct macros on the fly that can be applied to different places in your code.
One major downside is that it can take some configuration to get working the way you want it, especially if you want an IDE-like environment. NeoVim comes with a built-in LSP interface, which I've been able to get working pretty well for all of the languages that I use the most, but it's still kind of a pain to configure.
I'm sure Emacs is similar, but I've never used it. I don't think many people use Nano unless they need to edit something in a terminal but don't know how to use Vim. On that note, being comfortable with a terminal editor means that you'll have no problem if you're SSH-ing into a server or using the TTY console.
†_f(ci(fooavoids an unnecessary mode change, see comment below
Nice :). It's pretty basic but has just enough configuration options for what I need. It's basically just an app drawer and favorites drawer, but you can set the favorites drawer to never close and the app drawer to never open.
The UI tools are pretty limited and I had to play around with a screenshot in GIMP and re-arrange the exported settings file in order to get my favorites ordered as desired (possible without doing that, but slow). But since setting it up everything has been pretty smooth
Kvaesitso is pretty slick! I just tried it for a bit, and it looks well-written. I like having all my icons shrunk down and compressed on my desktop, so it's not quite what I'm looking for, but I tried Discreet Launcher after your comment and was able to configure it pretty well to my liking. Still missing some features that I like from OpenLauncher but it has what I need
Oh good point, thanks for the heads up. I see that the last release was a few years ago and there are a lot of open issues. I haven't had too many problems with it, but a launcher is something you don't want to have security vulnerabilities for. Will look around for an alternative
Edit: OpenLauncher might be a bit out of date. Will switch to Discreet Launcher for now, but the dev has stopped adding features and will only release bugfixes and Android compatibility updates moving forward
Haha yeah, nicely put. I do enjoy the content, mostly because I've been following these creators for some time, and it's hard to find a replacement for it... there is a lot of great content there, but it makes me feel gross using it. And same, I had no problem finding an alternative for Reddit (this), probably because I was not very attached to individual creators there.
I'm hoping a decentralized solution gains traction, but in the meantime I've been trying to limit the amount of information I share with the platform. I'm not actively trying to restrict my usage (most of that was achieved when I stopped using an account), but maybe it's a good idea to do so. I mostly use it when eating or going to sleep, and there are better ways to occupy that time.
Major bugs usually get fixed pretty quickly- I always check the GitHub to make sure I have the latest version when I have issues. And Invidious can work as an alternative most of the time, but some instances work better than others
I stopped using recommendations years ago and only use NewPipe and Invidious. I did notice a reduction in my watch time, but there is plenty to watch when using a subscription-only feed. I havent added very many channels to my list since then, but personalized recommendations aren't worth the privacy cost. Hoping to leave the platform eventually
Try going down the page and looking for the categories with more than a few bits of identifying information. I'm running LibreWolf with just uBlock Origin and Dark Reader (which I don't think influences results) and I'm able to get nearly-unique, instead of unique (but I do get unique on default settings). TBB gets non-unique, which is a good set of results to compare to.
In my case I noticed that my fonts were really unique so I set browser.display.use_document_fonts = 0. Also I use my WM to set my page resolution to 1920x1080, which seems to have a better fingerprint than the default LibreWolf floating resolution of 1600x900 (and even the letterboxing resolutions, from what I can tell).
I just spent some time testing again and checking for anything else. RFP does force a generic user agent, but unfortunately it keeps the version information and I can't figure out how to change it with RFP on. Would be nice to set it to the ESR version used by TBB (which has lower bits), but I'm not sure if that would lead to a more unique fingerprint (if, say, a feature was detected that is available in later versions but not ESR).
Edit: just tried Mullvad browser, and it's non-unique! Might be the best option.
Genkernel is a good alternative generator, but you can also write your own initramfs and build it into the kernel. A custom initramfs (see also) is pretty flexible- I've had success setting up cryptsetup, lvm, and dropbear sshd by reading the various wiki examples. Not sure about your Intel issue though
Yes! Depending on how much time you want to spend figuring things out... there is a learning curve, but the documentation is quite extensive. And you do learn a lot about Linux by diving in. The compile times aren't really an issue today if you have decent hardware- I run it at home and on all of my servers (some of them not very powerful). You can do other things while it's compiling.
It's great if you want to customize everything and learn how your system works, or are interested in optimizing everything for your specific CPU architecture. There are a few pitfalls (especially when learning), but I've generally been able to learn how to fix any issues as they arise.
Also, the package availability is great. If you can't find something in the gentoo repository or in an overlay, you can usually find its dependencies and build it yourself.
I can't speak for YubiKeys themselves, but I've been using an OnlyKey for years (which can emulate one). Works great for KeePassXC, but only because it can type the DB password (challenge-response unlock still requires the password). I haven't used the YubiKey emulator very much, except with a few services that are much easier to use if you have one.
I think it's great to have the option of securing things with a hardware key, and I think it's a good investment in general. But as others have said, it's probably not be the best choice for KeePassXC (but there are benefits). I would recommend an OnlyKey, but it seems the prices have gone way up and they're sold out.
No problem! And yeah, it's good to see people talking about it over here. I think it's the best tool for online privacy OOTB (depending on your threat model), and it gets better the more people use it.
The difference is that your ISP doesn't know where your packets are headed, and the destination doesn't know where your packets came from. The ISP sees you connect to the entrance node and the destination sees you connect from the exit node, and it's very difficult for anyone to trace the connection back to you (unless they own both the entrance and exit and use traffic coorelation or some other exploit/fingerprint). Regardless, both parties are generally able to tell that you are using TOR if they reference lists of known entrance/exit nodes. Also the anti-fingerprinting measures taken by TB are a bit more strict than other privacy-focused browsers
It's great for anything low bandwidth that isn't tied to your identity, and helps for peace of mind, despite its issues. You do run into captcha or DDOS protection issues occasionally, but the new tor circuit for this site button sometimes works. Also it uses letterboxing to prevent resolution-based fingerprinting, which isn't very pretty, but leaving it at its default size (or locking the size using the WM) works well and is good for privacy.
As a Vim/NeoVim user my number one reason is speed. There's a pretty steep learning curve, but it doesn't take long to see noticeable improvements.
Aside from terminal applications generally running faster than GUI ones, there is a tremendous amount of flexibility that it offers when it comes to actual text editing. For example, you learn how to type things like
_f(vi(cfoo_f(ci(foo† which goes to the beginning of the line, finds the first open parens, selects everything inside of the parens expression, then replaces that text with "foo". After a while these kinds of inputs become second nature, and you can start using them to construct macros on the fly that can be applied to different places in your code.One major downside is that it can take some configuration to get working the way you want it, especially if you want an IDE-like environment. NeoVim comes with a built-in LSP interface, which I've been able to get working pretty well for all of the languages that I use the most, but it's still kind of a pain to configure.
I'm sure Emacs is similar, but I've never used it. I don't think many people use Nano unless they need to edit something in a terminal but don't know how to use Vim. On that note, being comfortable with a terminal editor means that you'll have no problem if you're SSH-ing into a server or using the TTY console.
†
_f(ci(fooavoids an unnecessary mode change, see comment below