Distros that don’t have SELinux generally have AppArmor, which is similar, and has the advantage that it doesn’t have quite such a boneheaded design getting in the way all the time. :3 So I wouldn’t pick a distro just to get SELinux, personally!

(I don’t like how SELinux sticks labels on individual files, except those labels are apparently pointless, because there’s a tool specifically to go through your whole filesystem and reset all the labels if they get screwed up. Which can happen (e.g. if you mount a home directory that doesn’t have the labels of every single file in it set to “this is a home file”, because you moved it from a Debian install where that isn’t a thing).)

– Frost

We use nginx for that! It can proxy TCP/UDP in general. You can also have it be your TLS endpoint and then pass stuff back to the backend over plain HTTP, if you trust your VPS, but you don’t have to.

nginx can preserve the source IP with its “proxy_protocol” feature, somewhat (might only work for HTTPS; with proxy_protocol, nginx on server A will then set the appropriate header with the IP it gets from server B). Or if you decrypt on the VPS, it can set the appropriate header for you before sending it back to server A.

I’ve got a guide on how we have ours set up: https://frost.brightfur.net/blog/selfhosting-with-a-bounce-vps-part-1/

– Frost

Oooh lovely!! We’re uh, pre-12.5 I think.

A DVD won’t work, right, it’s gotta be a bluray? Because if we can do this with a DVD-R and not need another reader, that’d be great.

Shoot, apparently it’s not open source. That’s not confidence-inspiring… but then again PS3 CFWs weren’t either (*sighs*)

Does that apply to PS4s running 11.something? I can’t remember what OS version our PS4 is on, but it’s new enough that a jailbreak only came out pretty recently. Needed a specific game disc to work.

Oooh awesome. I figured normal burned discs wouldn’t work.

We don’t have a bluray burner (only a CD/DVD drive) but have been kinda wanting to get one.

Wait, you can get jailbreak discs from aliexpress? That might be worth looking into…

(although, how do we know if it’s got malware on it?)

Whoa, seriously? Okay that’s awesome to know. And pretty cool.

– Frost

The UI is just way, way, WAY less obnoxious.

I do wish it had the niche communities though. Stuff for individual games, etc.

– Frost

A miserable pile of posts!

And honestly, in the coming age of “OSes that don’t spy on you will be illegal!!”, I’m really, really glad for that. We’ve got the entire 27-ISO set of Debian 13.0.0 squirreled away. There’s even more discs for the sources, and they go to great lengths to ensure that everything can be built with no external dependencies that aren’t available in the archive.

Debian: It’s Apocalypse-Proof.™

– Frost

Haha yeah! :3 I uh, misread the critter I replied to as saying “I don’t get it” rather than “I’m not even interested in getting it”. Cue the massive infodump. >,,>

I’m not that sorry, though. It’s still fun to talk about and also kinda hilarious that it happened.

– Frost

Debian is weird in even having non-live ISOs, but they do have various live ones with different desktops! (Don’t grab the one from the homepage, grab one of the live ones instead.)

Yeah! https://www.debian.org/CD/live/, the little teeny “live KDE” link. =^.^=

You don’t want the “netinst” ISO on the main page. It technically works, but it’s a pain to use and needs internet access to install. Its only redeeming quality is the small download size and fitting on a CD (if you’re burning it to a CD-R which is unlikely).

Magnetic strips, technically all cards still have them as a backup, but 99.9% of readers accept all three and NFC tap or chip is usually the go-to!

The train station ticket machines where we reload our transit card only take swipes, though. So it is still a thing in very rare places.

When we first got our “food stamps” card (it apparently used to be physical stamps?? but that was long before our time. now you get basically a debit card that can only be used on food), it was also swipe-only. But then a year or two ago they replaced it with one that has a chip and can even do NFC! Nifty.

Cheques, nah, I think you still CAN get a physical paycheck, maybe?, if for some reason you wanted to?, but basically everyone does direct deposit these days

…at least, people who have bank accounts

that’s one reason to get a check. So yeah, those are still a thing, but not common. There are probably-sketchy “check cashing” places in low-income areas that you can take checks to instead of a bank if you don’t have a bank, I don’t know how that works.

Taxes – YEP. 100% still a thing. Fuck TurboTax & co., they pretty much bribed the government to keep this system because it makes them lots of money (because they can sell you “tax prep software” that does your taxes for you and is absurdly expensive and oh! you gotta buy a new one every year because of minor changes to the tax codes!).

– Frost

Nope! I’m a wolf! :3

I’m trans, but for species instead of gender. Yeah that’s a thing. 🐺

– Frost

This is awesome. Should be the normal way to do things!

– Frost

The homeserver doesn’t have to be fancy. We’re running all our stuff off a Dell Vostro from 2012 we got for like $30 on Craigslist. (It did need another $30 replacement PSU though. And it has 8GB RAM and a 500GB SSD which is nothing to sneeze at for a machine that cheap and that old.)

I mean, I could just go “TLDR grab Debian’s live KDE edition” if that’s easier!

The whole point in me explaining all that is that people don’t know all this stuff. That’s why I’m explaining it. I did gloss over the fact that distros exist, but it seems like the person I’m replying to already knows that multiple versions of Linux are a thing so that’s not a huge issue.

And going “here’s some options to pick from” helps if it turns out you’ve got different priorities than we do. But yeah, “TLDR Debian” is also good if you’re overwhelmed.

Funnily enough, Gajim from Flatpak (1.9.5) does drag and drop just fine!

I can’t remember what version we’ve got on our laptop– [can’t we just check packages.debian.org?] right! It’s 2.1.1-2, apparently. Good to hear that 2.2.0 is non-adwaitified, that sounds like a good place to fork from.

– Frost

Anything with the KDE desktop!

That’s a neat thing about Linux, the look and feel is actually totally separate from the distro. Everyone focuses on distros when really, that’s mostly under-the-hood stuff, the look and feel is the desktop environment.

KDE is windows-10-like (out of the box, you can also rearrange the crap out of it, ours is set up more like Mac!) and also happens to be one of the most full-featured desktop environments, so you won’t be missing stuff (like HDR support or whatever).

So, a distro with KDE.

Debian is great if you want something that Does Not Break on you. Ever. It will never throw you a curveball with an update. That also means you just won’t really get updates very much, outside of a Big Major Upgrade every couple of years. If you’re tired of Windows Update screwing with you, Debian’s perfect.

Fedora is pretty good if you want the new shinies all the time. Major updates every 6 months. Debian has a bigger appstore and even stuff that isn’t in there often provides .deb packages, which Fedora can’t run, but it’s not a huge deal.

Mint doesn’t have a convenient KDE version (but you can install KDE after the fact). It has its own desktop called Cinnamon. More Windows 7 vibes. It’s based on Debian so you get the Debian compatibility, as well, and they put work into making sure you have GUI apps for stuff like installing drivers (Debian you might need a terminal command or three during initial setup).

There’s also immutable distros like Bazzite, which is basically SteamOS But Desktop. It also comes with similar restrictions to SteamOS, though. Good for an Appliance Computer, an absolute fucking pain if you ever need to install drivers/VR stuff/other system software or what-have-you. I’d avoid for your main computer.

– Frost