I tried it the other night on my Pixel (Android 15) and had no issues. I’ve been trying out different launchers in an attempt to find one which isn’t asking for a monthly or yearly sub and has horizontal app drawer as an option! Both of which are getting to be more rare these days. I couldn’t see where to make the drawer scrollable on Lawnchair, so I skipped it for now.
As a Gen X member who is 50 yrs old, a grandparent of two Grand kids, I never touched a computer until I was 12 years old (1986), this, I think gave me a head start into the computer world with an old Radio Shack Color Computer II (hooked up to my TV) with a Tape Drive to load programs with. With some of the older Gen X group starting to reach retirement age, I think we will probably have a larger portion of the population more adapted to computer than the Boomers before us. That’s not to say that during the 80’s and 90’s everyone was into computers though. The important thing was that schools had Timex Sinclair computers and mostly Apple II computers which were the workhorses even into my high school years in the early 90’s, so exposure to computer basics such as copy/paste and Word processing were certainly well know then!
I say all of this to mention that while right now, some of the older generation generally knows how to copy/paste, isn’t scared of breaking the computer and pretty much get a long fine with them. I’m more skilled than my peers in a lot of areas but that’s because I’ve used them non stop for so long and the others used them only in school but never saw the value until around Windows 98 or Windows 2000.
I believe there will be a shift of more computer literacy as the Millennials and Gen Z’s reach my age and older. The writers then may say that compared to the previous generation (ours), that they are miles ahead in their skills and literacy. Even my Grand kids are growing up with exposure to tablets and phones (VERY SPARINGLY), but also live out in the rural country so are getting great life exposure to great outdoors. :) (Ages 2 and 6). One can only dare to imagine what technology we may have 40-50 years from now when they reach my age range.
Hands down, Bitwarden app on phone and in browser. Vaultwarden self hosted. Since I host it at home, I know it’s always in my server. The winning thing for me is that Bitwarden Supports Webuathn now, you can use it as it’s own webuathn key you authorize to log in with, so basically go the site you want to login with and when it asks for the webuathn, you can either have Bitwarden use the credentials you stored for it or your own biometric or hardware key instead.
With this, I sign into Authentik for my SSO just by clicking one link, and Bitwarden prompts to log in and I click the option. I’m auto logged into my server and no UN/PW passed to it.
I’ve tested others and nothing quite comes close except for KeepassXC, but for me, it’s a matter of personal preference on my side. I’ve been with Bitwarden since the early days.
Some examples of using Tasker:
When a specific phone contact or contact calls, it raises the volumes to max. This is useful if you went to an appointment, set your phone on silent or vibrate but forgot to reset it. After the call has been completed, it returns the phone to the original volume you set.
When I scan a NFC Tag, i have it send a webhook to my August lock to unlock it. As an apartment dweller, if I go down to the car to unload groceries, the door by default auto locks. This means I have to pull the phone out, unlock it, open the August App, and then tell it to unlock the door and sometimes use the biometric to do so. Having the NFC tag do this means I can put it in my wallet and when I put my phone in the same pocket where the wallet it is, it triggers the door.
When connected to my computer only, it keeps the screen on all the time.
When I launch certain apps, it keeps the screen on until the app is closed. Very useful when you are at the grocery store working within a strict budget and want to see how much you have put in to the cart!
I have a widget on my screen which toggles my Private DNS on/off. This allows me to disable the adblock dns I use if I encounter a public wifi which insists I disable it. (I usually stay away from those, and use my mobile data, but sometimes it’s unavoidable when there is so much interference your 5G goes to NONE and you have to be there for a while.)
Likewise, I have a widget which toggles my Tailscale connection on/off which comes in handy as well. Again, if the Wifi spot rejects custom DNS’s and I’m in the scenario above.
If you have a Google Account (Sadly, this is the only way). You can view the list of profiles/tasks which other people have built. It’s a growing list. https://taskernet.com/shares/
Using third party software such as Wake on LAN, when I come home and connect to my WiFi, it wakes my computer. (Or really any condition I set to trigger it).
I will say that the dev is very responsive and active in releasing updates and new features.
With that said, it has a slight learning curve which he(the developer) is working on to help simplify things and modernize it more. Since taking over the project from the previous owner, it’s really grown.
I admit though, I used to have a lot more tasks and profiles, but it seems that Android is starting to bake those functions in so it’s not as used on my end. But don’t let it it sway you. Your imagination is the only limit with what you can do with Tasker.
Generally, for less than a cup of coffee, it’s worth the purchase price. :)
I have a TCL ROKU TV which is way too chatty on my network. It sends every single keypress on the remote to their servers (just look into the dev console which is easy enough to see what is logged). I have an adblock dns server on my network
These are just in the last 23 minutes of the hour. As I understand, it’s not always doing this if they are not blocked, but when you block them, it starts to panic!
The advantage of doing this is instead of having the ad on the right side of the home menu, I have a nice translucent adbox with nothing in it… Also, if you look up the secret codes for Roku menus, you can also toggle the ad server they use so sometimes if some slip through, you get some in house tested ones which are sometimes funny. But that’s extremely rare for us.
Our next TV will probably be a display or offline only and be a streaming box with custom firmware such as Librelec or something else when the time comes.
Anxiously waiting for ARCH to update their repos, they YANKED it from the unstable repo so I can’t cheat and download it early. :)
I test installed it in Proxmox in a Debian 12 LXC for the sever part, it was fairly easy, just run three commands. The client was as well, but failed to do something with the email during registration. It has a while longer to go I think. But I put it in my bookmarks to visit every so often as well. :)
I lost my respect for Asus when I had a Zenwatch 2 (I still have it), and they promised at the time Android Wear 2.0 in front our faces for months promising it would be released, but refused to even give an estimated time of release to OTA. This was well after WearOS 2 was released. Their online forum staff members were rude sometimes about it and other times, never responded to passionate asks about when it would be made available. The fact that they didn’t reply and care about giving any updates or indication at the time, was enough to push me far away from them.
I use Technitium DNS as both my DHCP and DNS Server on my network. I then have my ISP Router’s DHCP turned off, and point the primary DNS IP To Technitium’s on my network. I have roughly 66-67 network devices at a given time on my network, mostly wireless. (Think wiFi locks, Lights, Outlets etc) then I have my phones and gaming systems an any given thing.
To manage my IP’s I use an Airtable type of database via BaseRow, also self hosted. Through my router’s records, I copied/pasted every single MAC address I found, into a column in my BaseRow table there, and then added the device name or friendly name to another with an assigned IP I want to use. I have a more organized system of ranges 192.168.1.1-10 is mobile devices, 192.168.1.11-30 is IoT etc…
By having my network setup in this fashion, I accomplish a few things, all new devices which power on or connect to the router to get their IP assignment fail to get it since it’s turned off there, and they search the network for an available DHCP Server which lands squarely on the TechnitiumDNS server and are assigned it through there. I also have adblocking enabled through the same server so I have a more home wide adblock which works. (You’d be amazed at how much Telemetry a TV Sends out for every single remote keypress!) I have been able to block those with the adblock enabled. With the DNS server, you can also assign DHCP ranges address, it is really an overly complex server and probably overkill for a home network. I’ve only scratched the surface of what it can do.
If you don’t want to fuss with TechnitiumDNS, there’s AdguardHome, or even PiHole you can use if you want to block Ads (or you can simply disable that function) and those also act as a DHCP Server.
Or, if you are wanting to spend a few hours configuring it, you could run your own DHCP Server in a VM or dedicated device such as a Raspberry Pi.
With all of these settings, it’s important to set your DHCP lease offer long enough that if you have to reboot the DHCP Server for kernel update, or it crashes, you won’t have any devices fail as some do regular polling to check for connectivity (My Linux computer does this a lot). I don’t remember if it’s KDE or Arch. Anyway, running the DNS Server also allows you to custom build your own “domain” system if you will. So could assign maybe your self hosted Calendar for example to http://calendar.local or http://calendar.internal.
By setting up a dedicated DHCP Server, using the manual method or one of the different AdBlock systems, you can also turn off DHCP registration for ‘foreign’ devices or those which aren’t in your DHCP table. This offers a small element of extra security for your WiFi, but it’s not 100% secure if someone knows your IP ranges and Subnet Mask. Also, this will make it easier in the future for you if you upgrade your router or replace it as there’s just two settings to change. (DCHP Server off and the optional self hosted DNS).
Why not use a different DDNS service? There are plenty out there. :) I think this may solve your issue. I’ve been using freemyip.com’'s for a while and have had no problem in the past issusing LetsEncrypt SSL’s. At the moment, I’m on Cloudflare tunnels so it’s automatic with them, which I know is a huge trust issue for a lot of people, but I don’t mind it for my stuff. But I do like to have my DDNS as a backup service from time to time.
I’ve dabbled in it, but not really committed to it. It’s a great lightweight server of course. I am a KDE Plasma user so I did a quick test of that and was able to install it via Alpine, but at the time, the support for javaws was not there which I needed at the time for my job, so that killed my plans on using it. I may venture back to it later on .
Mushroom cards
Local Tuya - so I can control my Tuya Devices without needing the cloud.
Wyze - I have a couple of cameras which are Wyze so I use it for those. I’m not against the cloud for some things. :)
Spook - not your homie – When I deactivate or rename a device (seasonally), it lets me know which dashboards need updated for example.
Playstation Network - so I can show what my PS5 and PS4 are doing while active.
Several other items such as themes I’ve tried out and probably more I’ve tried but never removed.
I have been using Tailscale, connected it to my domain, I use Authentik for my OIDC/SSO Sign in and tied it that way for the MFA OIDC Login Tailscale let’s you use. All I needed to do is setup a webfinger for it and once it verified my domain, I was able to give them my OIDC settings for them. Tailscale so far for me in the last year or so has been quite simple to use. Plus, being able to log into my admin console and any devices I enroll through Authentik’s front end, has given me peace of mind knowing it’s quite secure. (All of this on a Proxmox server BTW).
One may argue about self hosting Wireguard and I agree, it’s quite easy to do if you use something like wg-easy which makes it simple to add phones to your network. My concern with it though was having to poke a hole into my firewall for the WG traffic to hit the server, once I got into Tailscale, it’s made it easier and I don’t have any open ports on the router now. I think this is primarily why the Jupiter Broadcasting guys push it so much on their podcasts, not to mention one of the hosts on his podcast is an employee for Tailscale as well, so that probably helps a bit.
As for funding for both Nebula, or Tailscale, they do cater to enterprise customers so you have the assurance that they do have to answer to them if they revoke a service or ruin it. :)
For Tailscale, it’s just a matter of them allowing you to add 100 devices for free and it’s simple command to install it on any client via the cli including Apple TV for example. For phones, I have Tailscale on my phone connected 24/7 to my exit node which is my Proxmox server which acts as one, and as a backup, my Raspberry Pi which acts as one as well. So, even if I’m on the road or away from home, I’m always on my home network (unless blocked by overzealous sysadmins on their public WiFi networks). There’s not much to manage via the phone, but I like to think it’s ‘set and forget’ really, once you have it all configured, it just runs in the background and they do not decrypt your traffic much less care what goes through it.
I also use Stealth for my Reddit experience. It also doesn’t support comments or logging in. :) https://f-droid.org/packages/com.cosmos.unreddit/
Cyberchef, I’ve looked at but honestly for me, IT Tools works best for my needs so it’s all good on my end.
Dozzle is just log viewing plain and simple. Dockge shows more that’s all I know. I tested Dockge earlier on in development and haven’t been back since, I know it’s grown a lot more since.
I’ve seen a few mentions of PiHole and AdguardHome, I started on PiHole, then moved to AdguardHome for adblocking. Then I heard about and have been using TechnitiumDNS server which is sort of overkill for our needs, but with the right ad-lists, it is fantastic at blocking advertisements on my home network. Super fast install too, even on a Raspberry Pi 2 :) I run that along with Proxmox-VE (Protected behind OIDC Login) and several other containers on my cranky old Dell Desktop server.
Mostly Vaultwarden, and a few other services for home private use such as PairDrop for inter system sharing and a self destructing file sharing server for when we need to send documents to our Attorney’s (rarely but sometimes we need to) office via Pingvin.
I also run:
With Authentik setup, I can login to things like my Fresh Tomato Router TechnitiumDNS (Both use HTTP Auth headers) and Memos which uses OIDC/SSO. It’s meant to replace our Google Keep notes.
docker logs -follow command.I still use Portainer-CE and am happy there, I may try Dockage or the others, but it’s fine for what I need it for (It’s also protected by OIDC)
I’m sure I may have missed a few, but this post has gone on long enough. :)
My biggest issue with YAY is the occasional mandatory compiling of an app seemingly randomly, so I go in thinking a quick update will turn into a much slower one because of the compiling it does. I haven’t looked into it, but if there was a way to alert before doing this via a flag, it’d save me time and sometimes frustration.
I have learned over the years to try to install the -bin version as much as possible, but sometimes that’s not enough if flagged out of date (Joplin especially), so I sometimes end up installing the appimage.
I left Win8 to go full time on Linux. For several years before this, I used to host web sites professionally and build them so I was used to Centos and Debian servers but not comfortable enough to be able to manage them deeply. In other words, just enough to make them work, but more complex troubleshooting was not my strong suit.
I later landed a job where their primary systems are Linux based and through that training and learning, I became more comfortable in the CLI and have never looked back.
Instability you ask? This is like a slow creep to instability and freeze your system. It’s called the Bash Fork Bomb (look it up if you want), but it’s a copy/paste you put in and it slows your system down by consuming all the system resources and cause it to lock up HARD. It goes away after a system reboot, though.
I was going to post the code here, but decided to play nice. But if you are curious:
https://itsfoss.com/fork-bomb/
(edit: Made ‘slow’ ‘slows’)