There are just two subs I check about once every two days, but I’m yet to log in again after I disconnected my account last month. I used to only visit it through Libreddit as the UX is better anyway but now that one’s gone too…

Thunderbird on the desktop; K-9 Mail on Android.

Definitely not, first of all I love pastel colors and, on the more practical side of things, at least for touch interfaces I do prefer to have some padding: even on larger screens (my current phone is 6.7") I tend to prefer larger and more padded interfaces to avoid hitting the wrong one (and that’s the main reason why I don’t like to type on a phone that much).

So I might even be in the minority but having a control center with larger but less buttons on each page is exactly what I prefer, I don’t mind having to scroll if it’s easier to toggle what I need to.

I agree, also the holding back of packages just for the sake of waiting probably doesn’t make it more stable, despite what the devs say; also having 300+ packages updated at the same time might make it worse for troubleshooting in case something goes wrong.

As someone who actually started with Manjaro back in 2020 before moving to EndeavourOS after 9 months, I would say that there is indeed a steeper learning curve as you don’t get for example a GUI package manager (Pamac is awful and even as a newbie I used it for maybe three days before I started to use the CLI, but a Linux beginner might want one) and the fact it is a true rolling release means you need to do some more research and maintenance, so I wouldn’t call Endeavour a distro for absolute beginners, unless one is determined to learn a lot about how a computer works… but again one shouldn’t probably use a rolling release then; Manjaro just tricks you to believe it is easier, but it probably is only if you don’t use the AUR.

Maybe Garuda is more beginner friendly than EndeavourOS while avoiding most of the problems Manjaro has? Although I’ve never used it as I don’t see any advantage over Endeavour, and I’m not a fan of excessive out of the box theming and Chaotic AUR enabled as default…

Wow, I’ve never even used Sync but from the screenshot of the Reddit app on Google Play it’s one of those UIs so good that make you want to use it. I’m currently fine with the Lemmy PWA but the more feature-complete Reddit apps that get “ported” to be used with Lemmy the better, especially to ease the transition for new users.

Couldn’t agree more, two years ago I was gifted a small wireless speaker which works fine and everything but I sometimes even forget to charge it because its cable is a 15cm short USB-A to Micro-USB one which somehow is the only Micro-USB cable I have left at home as I didn’t have any other device with that port in years and I had thrown away a few cables when I last moved. Now whenever I am looking for a new electronic device USB-C is one of the first things I check and it’s a deal breaker for me.

Manjaro was the first Linux distro I used as a daily driver, from October 2020 to July 2021, when I switched to EndeavourOS. To be fair the main reason I switched was all those previous mess-ups by the developers and the troubled past, which I didn’t know of when I moved to Linux. In the year or so I used it, I didn’t have any messed update or crash myself.

I would say it’s still a fine distro for beginners who want to try a rolling release (as EndeavourOS is imho better in every way, but it doesn’t come with any GUI package manager so I wouldn’t call it a distro for absolute beginners), but can’t see any other usage case, as it’s especially risky if you want to use packages from the AUR.

Motorola Edge 30 Pro (aka Motorola Edge+ 2022 for the North Americans here), which I got back in early November last year. I did research for a while before buying it (and got it with a huge discount) and I’m mostly happy with my purchase, it’s a nice phone with a clean near-stock Android experience (although I’ve since changed launcher to Kvæsitso) and it’s extremely fast, although I must say I’m not a heavy smartphone user.

Worst things are that the Android 13 update took nearly three months long than planned to come (and here in Italy apparently we were among the first to get the update) and Motorola is not that fast with security updates; while the only really annoying thing is that sometimes it stops the internet connection usually after giving the command to download/update apps, whether from the Play Store or from F-Droid; the connection somehow is still there as it’s enough to cancel and tell do download/update again and everything works.

This is my first Android phone: my first smartphone was a Nokia X6 running Symbian which I got in 2011 and then I used iPhones for a decade (while having been a Mac user all the time), first an iPhone 5C in 2013 and then an 8 Plus which I got in 2018. Clearly the newest was the best of the bunch as it was a quite major upgrade from the 5C, which in turn came when Symbian was an abandoned OS; the last two phones both lasted me just short of five years, and I changed back in November mainly because I could hand it down (refurbished) to my mom, otherwise I would have waited perhaps another year.

This time I decided to leave iOS for good as I was increasingly unsatisfied and worried with Apple’s walled garden ecosystem - for the same reason I had already left macOS for Linux back in 2020 (never had any other Apple products nor subscriptions except for a few iPods over the years) - and even after the novelty has worn off I vastly prefer Android. Right now I have this Android phone and my laptop I’m writing from, which only runs Linux, specifically EndeavourOS, although my old 2009 iMac still works - thanks to a SSD swap back in '17, although it hasn’t gotten newer updates since High Sierra - and I tinker with it from time to time. At work I use Windows 10… but that’s not my choice.

I use the following ones (on Firefox), except for uBO the others are just for conveniency:

• Bitwarden
• Gesturefy (for some time from early 2021 to late 2022 I used to use Vivaldi as my primary browser and now if I’m using a mouse, not having gestures in a browser feels odd…)
• LibRedirect
• Plasma Integration
• uBlock Origin (middle mode and with some additional lists)
• User-Agent Switcher and Manager (if I find a site that says it doesn’t work with Firefox).

• AntennaPod (podcast player)
• Authenticator Pro (2FA)
• Aves (gallery)
• Bitwarden
• Catima (for stores’ reward cards)
• Etar (calendar)
• Geometric Weather
• Infinity for Reddit… as long as it works
• Joplin (note-taking software, synced with the desktop client)
• K-9 Mail
• Kvæsitso (launcher)
• Mull (Firefox fork)
• NetGuard (works in the background as a VPN to block network access to certain apps, for example I use it to block every network connection by Gboard)
• NewPipe
• Simple File Manager
• Tasks.org

I have an HP LaserJet P1005 from 15 years ago which mostly works fine with Hplip except that every once in a while it asks me to reinstall the proprietary plugin needed. I’m taking note of how other brands seem to work better but to be honest I print so little since I digitally sign everything that once I run out of toner it’s far cheaper for me to have something printed in a shop than to replace it.

Really looking forward to the new calendar, I love Thunderbird as a mail client but I’ve always found calendar and reminders to be quite unintuitive to use and I often had problems with CalDAV sync.

The only reason I reluctantly keep my account is because of a few niche communities I lurk and sometimes comment in. And I’ll add that Reddit is usable thanks to the old interface + uBlock Origin and third-party apps on mobile (and we all know what’s happening next); I’d call it “alright” just as a euphemism for “not (yet) as bad as Facebook or Instagram”.

The decentralized and community-driven model that essentially guarantees Lemmy being free from big corporations creating the ad-centric hellscape of centralized social media. That, and the UI is much clearer and feels lighter, even compared to Old Reddit.

probably under the influence of reddit, where this has become completely gamed–i can’t stand this style of information sorting.

I’ve actually noticed myself doing this by instinct as in the last few months I mostly read Reddit comments sorted chronologically. Part of that is because of the hivemind problem in certain subs, which frankly is even less tolerable the more trivial a subject is, as in, for example, subs for fans of a certain artist where other users jump to downvote people who dare say that not every thing the artist does is perfect. And what’s even the point in discussing things if everything is “how good this is”, “how amazing this is”, etc.?

Same, I’m especially hoping to see Infinity for Lemmy someday.

I had been lurking on a few Lemmy instances for years (more or less since mid-2020 when I started getting more interested in FOSS) and with the Reddit shitshow I finally decided it was time to join, so I was already quite familiar with the concept of instances and how the Fediverse works on principle.

I’m slowly exploring more to find interesting communities to interact with, and hopefully there’ll be more incoming users from Reddit creating more niche spaces.