Mine is Local Send which is a FOSS alternative similar to air drop that works across a variety of devices.
Syncthing; it’s a modern miracle
Last time I tried it, it choked on anything over a million files. Is it better now?
What is it?
Similar in function to google drive or onedrive or other cloud sync services but everything is kept local, more performant, and non-intrusive. Each device keeps your chosen synced folders up to date with other devices. You choose what is synced with each device on a foldee-by-folder basis.
I use it to sync my password manager database (keepass) and my notes app, among other things. So all my devices have the password database up to date and i can use the same password manager accross them.
It also provides version control optionally. I use obsidian for notes so if i screw up i can revert to the prwvious revision as a complex ‘undo’ option.
Works on major platforms including android, Linux, windows, and i assume apple stuff.
Awesome. I wonder if I can incorporate OneDrive easily. I’m on a family plan and have 1 TB of storage. Maybe there’s a way to upload stuff to OneDrive without the garbage of OneDrive.
Hmm. No it won’t work like that. It only syncs between devices. But i suppose you could have a dedicated device sitting in a closet or whatever which only handles a cloud sync service to which you could use synching with the one drive folders. That would minimize the suffering of having to deal with the broken interface of onedruve/google sync.
Yeah exactly. The Drive Sync hasn’t been too bad but OneDrive app is much more limited and I’m afraid to use it because it’s so flaky. Especially on non-Windows.
It synchronises files between machines. So you could sync your home folder for example or just backup games that don’t support cloud saves
It syncs things.
No but really, it’s Pretty freaking cool A tool you can use to automatically sync data across multiple OS with minimal interaction from you.
Oh, is it like a Dropbox but without a cloud?
Yes. You have a “share”. That’s the imaginary dropbox-like thing. Then you have a folder on some device that you link to that share. All folders you link with that share become the same on any device, intelligently.
For sanity’s sake, unless I’m doing something like syncing game map folders across devices but inside a game’s special map folder, i keep them all in a folder called ‘sync’, and name the folders in ‘sync’ after the share name. Otherwise, things can get wonky. Consistent naming is important imo. With a share called “share with bob” started from a folder called ‘bob sync’ on sam’s end, ‘Sam’ on bob’s end, and they stay that way after anita joins, and she calls it ‘bob and Sam’ or something. Someone else joins and calls it “buddies”. Then, people say things like ‘i put it in the sam folder’, and it brings up questions.
But with a little bit of organization, it’s awesome. Drop a file in a folder, and it’s now on the other person’s computer too. They move it out, and the file’s gone for you.
If the computers can talk to each other (same lan, or proper internet connection) they will. If you have dysfunctional NAT or phones with no public-facing IP that are connecting to each other, just make sure some system can be accessed, and it’s all good. You want a cloud backup? Just set up the daemon on a server somewhere, and join the share.
When I learned about it first time I thought it sounded too good to be true. Turns out, it is just that good.
This isn’t exactly “can’t live without,” that would be HomeAssistant. But what I Immediately thought of?
This is an RTS game in the spirit of Total Annihilation.
- labor of love
- fully 3d, including ability to rotate or raise/lower view
- tens of thousands of units without hardware lag for reasonably modem hardware (3-4 years old)
- all shots actively rendered, leading to:
- realistic friendly fire
- even air units can get hit by ballistic shots targeting land units (although odds are fairly slim)
- redirect-unit-to-dodge micro is effective in some situations
- meaningful terrain
- radar will have blind spots based on line-of-sight
- radar gives clear indicator of coverage during placement
- two factions, almost 200 units each, with tier 1, 2, and 3 units. A third (currently playable with a setting change) faction is in the works.
- crafty, non-cheating ai opponents
- free server hosting (!)
- active servers all times of day
The overall feel and balance of the game is great. The changes they make to balance are generally light and reasonable, and the game had a good community.
Fam and friends play together often.
Well we can’t live without a modern game that acknowledges how awesome Total Annihilation is as an idea so effectively that means we can’t live without Beyond All Reason/The Spring Engine right?
I mean Forged Alliance Forever is amazing and I am zero percent bashing it… and ok I guess we would still have Planetary Annihilation, and that game looks pretty awesome too…so I suppose technically we could live without Beyond All Reason but I doubt even the Planetary Annihilation devs would be happy about that world, I know the FAF community wouldnt be happy lol.
Loved TA as a kid. Played it for countless hours on GameSpy and EA Zone. Will definitely give this a try, thank you!
Sweet! For others coming by, here’s the official trailer:
That link doesn’t seem to work for me 🙁
Fixed, but it’s a youtube link.
Well, I guess we’re a little past the year mark but I really like Lemmy and Jerboa lol.
Proxmox, if that counts, life changing.
Same. I went from one overly complicated Debian install to two dozen neat and self contained VMs that do one thing each. I even tricked a Windows VM into not knowing that it’s a VM, so I can game with anticheat games.
Got any recommended sources for someone looking to do the same thing? My home server is approaching 18 years old, was looking to set up something neat and tidy to replace it when it eventually fails. Tricking a windows vm sounds pretty useful too!
I don’t have a good primary source, its been a lot of disparate googling. But if you have any questions at all, let me know. I love helping
I might take you up on that, thanks for the offer!
I’ll go with FreeCAD. I’ve known about it for a while and tried it about 5-10 years ago but have given it another look as I try to get back into CAD stuff and hate the restrictive licenses of commercial products. It has come a LONG way and is far more intuitive to use than it used to be.
Have you heard? The release candidate of 1.0 dropped just a few days ago. It looks very interesting.
!!!
I had missed that. Thank you!
That is great to hear, definitely seemed like FreeCAD was REALLY basic in the past, but there is such a big gap for a really fully featured FOSS Cad software!
My favourite recent one is Yunohost, which makes it super easy to spin up a little self-hosted server with a bunch of apps. I’ve been having good fun with that and a spare Raspberry Pi lately.
It’s not quite as point-and-click, but I’m using Docker for that because Yunohost kept messing up updates. Most server apps will have some instructions on how to run them in docker, especially a
docker-compose.yml
file, so you don’t have to rely on the Yunohost team to package said app.The way I do it is that I put each suggested compose file in their own file, and import them in my main docker-compose.yml file like this:
version: '3' include: - syncthing.yml
Then just run
docker compose pull && docker compose up -d
every time you change something or want to update your apps, and you’re good to go.Software updates in particular are waaaaaayyy easier on Docker than Yunohost.
This has uncovered my shameful Linux confession lol - I don’t understand Docker at all. I think I’m reasonably okay with Linux stuff, I can put an Arch install together without using the archinstall script, I got NixOS up and running without too much trouble etc. but I just can’t get my head around how Docker is supposed to work for some reason.
For self-hosting purposes, Docker = lightweight disposable VMs that are configured via
docker-compose.yml
. All important data should be in “volumes”, which are just shared folders between the host and the container.The end result is that you can delete and re-create containers at any time and they should just pick up where they left off from the data that’s in these volumes.
Each individual published image has some paths they want to use for that; everything is usually specified in their example docker-compose files.
If you’re not a dev, don’t even try to understand Dockerfiles, it’s not for you.
Jellyfin Sonarr Radarr Prowlarr stack
*chef’s kiss*
Add a private torrent indexer and/or Usenet and it’s perfection.
There’s also Homarr for those who prefer a nice and easy frontend to install the arr suite and more.
paperless-ngx, after having to turn my apartment upside down to find some paper documents.
Thank you for reminding me of this one! I keep forgetting to try it out
Oh wow! Every now and then I feel like I needed something like this. Thanks!
LaTeX and maybe NixOS with hyprland (both for the first time)
Check out Typst and its flake! Really nice, a lot simpler than latex. here’s my template https://git.sr.ht/~imadnyc/nix-templates
Syncthing
Freetube.
Once they added quick playlist functionality earlier this year, it was over for YouTube for me.
At this point it has everything I need and could only use small QoL improvements to be absolutely perfect for me.
Ad and sponsorblock integration is sweet too
I also prefer freetube to the containerized web hosted softwares like Invidious because I sit at a personal computer all day.
Variety - a silly taskbar program that changes my background randomly from my own selected sources with added random quotes. I have it set to change my background every 3 hours and the quotes every hour I think. I just can’ live without it anymore.
I was previously using Obsidian, which is great! but didn’t like that it was closed source. I then went on to try various options [0] but none of them felt “right”. I eventually found notesnook and it hit everything I was looking for [1]. It’s only gotten better in the last year I started using it and just recently they introduced the ability to host your own sync server, which is one of the requirements it didn’t initially make, but was on their roadmap.
[0] Obsidian, Standard Notes, OneDrive, VSCode with addons, Joplin, Google Keep, Simple Notes, Crypt.ee, CryptPad (more of a collabroation suite, which I actually really like, but it did not fit the bill of a notes app), vim with addons, Logseq, Zettlr, etc.
[1] Requirements in no particular order:
- Open source client and server.
- Cross-platform availability as I use Windows, Linux, Mac, and Android.
- Cross-platform feature parity.
- Doesn’t fight me over how notes should be taken - looking at Logseq’s lack of organization.
- Easy notes syncing.
- End-to-end encryption (E2EE). It’s about to be 2025, if the tools you’re picking up aren’t E2EE, you’re letting unknown strangers access your data and resell it. It doesn’t matter what their privacy policy says as that can always change and/or they can get compromised/compelled to expose your data.
- Ability to publish notes.
- Decent UX.
I started using Zettlr after Obsidian and i am pretty happy with it (besides one or two little things). I’ll also look into Notesnook
Can you self host this yet?
Nice, I checked earlier on mobile but couldn’t find it. Not sure why. Thank you!
I am using Logseq and the organization is basically the only thing not working for me. I will try this out.
I really tried making Logseq work for me but even if they added some kind of organization/hierarchy, I still had performance issues with my limited notes (just testing things, didn’t want to go all the way in), and various copy/paste drag and drop UX issues that made the experience frustrating.
Currently im using standard note but id love to give this a try. I first heard of it from techlore
Lol love the use of references. So glad you posted this. Looks fantastic.
Nice ive been using obsidian as well I’ll give this a shot
Beets. Awesome CLI tagging manager for music libraries.
Speaking of tagging, keep an eye on TagStudio
Lemmy
It’s been a bit over a year for me, otherwise this would be the answer.