I use Fedora Asahi Remix currently, and I want to switch to NixOS but am uncertain about the MacBook support, and even if it was good switching would take longer than it’s worth unless my current installation stops working for whatever reason

1.Email

FastMail, IceDove (GNU debranded ThunderBird), FairEmail

2.Cloud storage / file sync

Syncthing, Nextcloud for sharing and browsing files, I store my files using TrueNAS and a RAID Z2 configuration with Backblaze B2 for backup

3.Maps & navigation

OsmAnd with Brouter (FastBike-VeryLowTraffic profile) for ebike, my local transit app for public transit, Magic Earth the rare occasion I use a car, Uber rarely, I still use Google Maps for searching because everything else sucks

4.Search engine

Kagi, nowadays I usually use Deepseek R1 model with either Kagi Assistant or OpenRouter but might self-host LibreChat

5.Web browser

LibreWolf for searches, FireFox and FireFox PWAs for sites I regularly visit but planning to switch to Floorp. On Android, Cromite for random sites, Vanadium for sides I stay logged in to, IronFox with extensions for searches.

6.Calendar

Etar synced with Nextcloud using DAVx5

7.Contacts management

GrapheneOS contacts app synced with Nextcloud, the Fossify app has given me problems

8.Notes / to-do lists

Tasks.org synced with Nextcloud, Logseq for random notes, Markdown or comments in Typst documents in certain contexts

9.Office suite (docs, spreadsheets, etc.)

Typst or LaTeX for documents I make myself. LibreOffice or Collabora app for MS office documents.

10.Messaging / chat

Signal (Molly) and Discord (Vesktop, Revenge) most of the time

11.Video calling

Signal or Discord for personal, Teams for business stuff

12.Social media / microblogging RSS reader / news

Lemmy, Reddit, Instagram

13.Music streaming / podcast app

Tidal for my own playlists, Spotify for playlists from other people, YouTube when I want to randomly listen to something, ListenBrainz and Last.fm for scribbling. I want to set up Navidrome again but last time I did it was a disaster.

15.Password manager

Bitwarden/Vaultwarden

16.VPN / DNS / Firewall

InviZible Pro and Privoxy (uses Tor and I2P). I should probably get Mullvad or AirVPN.

17.Launcher / Android OS (if you use custom ROMs)

Kvaesitso

18.App store / APKs

Obtainium for FOSS, Google Play for proprietary

19.Photo backup / gallery

Syncthing-Fork, Aves Libre

20.Weather

Weather.gov, Windy which tends to be more accurate for more specific locations

If the 20% they don’t support is the absolute most basic of human rights, then as far as I can tell they support 0% of what I want.

I used to never close tabs and they would accumulate as I kept doing more web searches and other activities. Now when I need to do stuff I usually open a new window instead for different tasks and if I need to free up RAM then I start closing other windows for tasks I’m not doing anymore so it closes all of the related tabs at the same time

Nowadays with Apple, the bigger issue is the ARM Linux ecosystem being neglected in terms of support rather than the hardware compatibility (that is for M1/M2). The hardware for the most part works except for USB-HDMI and fingerprint (which didn’t work on my HP laptop either).

Spotube is decent for playing Spotify playlists you come across or people send you

There’s also Kiwi Farms targeted harassment involved as well

lemmy.ml federates with almost all instances most of which aren’t leftist, the admins are leftist as is a lot of the local userbase, but the moderation varies between communities and this one tends to be one of the more permissive ones. If you want one that’s more exclusively leftist you’re probably looking for Hexbear or Lemmygrad.

Lemmy, Reddit, Instagram, local communities on Signal and Discord

Helix because it’s simple and works without tweaking it.

Right now I use mainly Firefox, not because I like it but because it comes with my distro (whereas LibreWolf requires Flatpak) making it work well with the PWA project and it supports weird hacks necessary to install Widevine on my system so I can listen to Tidal. I also have LibreWolf installed with data set to delete on close and set up to proxy over Tor and I2P using privoxy and has LibRedirect installed which is set up to redirect to the corresponding onion/i2p domains. I was trying to install Zen Browser using the Guix package manager earlier but had problems, but I might try again later.

On Android, I use Vanadium for sites I stay logged into, Cromite with auto clearing history for other stuff, and Ironfox for Kagi and to use plugins like LibRedirect.

That’s Instagram in its normal state, right now my Instagram feed basically turned into LiveLeak

People should stop making these sort of posts

also on debian or ubuntu based distros you have the biggest selection of programs available.

AUR and nixpkgs have a massive amount of packages and are more up-to-date, and basically anything not on there can be installed with Flatpak

Would also be interesting to see a Rust version of Genode

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Using AI like Deepseek is a lot easier than shifting through 50 search results, if the question is for a relatively new technology though then it usually doesn’t work

Federated Github? That’s… git.

Github is a forge with features like issues, pull requests, project planning, documentation, project sites, and automation, so not really.

They claim to be anarchist and I’ve seen a lot of users from there criticize Democrats, although they hate Marxists also, so I’m not sure. They’re also one of the few instances that federates with Hexbear, but they do block Lemmygrad.

If by “diverse” you mean “has western conservatives”, then considering how the entire concept of the fediverse is progressive, you’re not going to find many of them here. On Reddit, there’s r/AskPolitics which overall leans liberal and is US centric but is more open to discussion than other subreddits. There’s some other debate subreddits as well which you might be interested in. They’re helpful for developing political views, but after that hearing the same BS from people who have fundamentally different values gets tiring and people leave so that’s why there aren’t many of those spaces.

If you’re open to other viewpoints that are opposed to both Republican and Democrat, leftist instances like lemmy.ml, Hexbear, Lemmygrad, and dbzer0 have that, and they can have very different stances on other issues as well (i.e. Lemmygrad vs dbzer0). They can still be echo-chambery (which is hard to avoid) but they also tend to have more users that are interested in intellectual debate.

As far as what instance actually has the most diverse points of view, I’d say lemm.ee which federates with basically everybody and I’ve seen users there from all over the political spectrum. However, there’s isn’t much in terms of political discussion there compared to other instances.