Honestly I want a Linux phone, but the scene needs to mature a bit. I’d also like a physical keyboard, so I’m even more limited in my options. LilyGo just released something I’d try, but it sold out almost instantly. Good call on the signal transfer, though I wish better platforms were catching on. Having to use a phone number to sign up kind of defeats the purpose in my opinion. Graphene and Postmark are on my short list of things to try if I end up on an android device.

To be totally honest I didn’t read your entire post, but just from your intro I think we are in similar situations. ISP router, low costs, using only the hardware you have around. I’ve solved a lot of stuff with Tailscale. None of my services are public facing and instead I connect to them over Tailscale (could be replaced with wireguard).

The wall I’m hitting you or maybe others could help with, is accessing my services from sub domains of a single Tailscale address rather than having to type port numbers for everything. I know this involves a reverse proxy and DNS (I use PiHole for that), but I’m stuck trying to configure the two in a way that actually works. Once I finally ditch iOS for good I’ll probably just sync a hosts file between all my devices using Syncthing to help streamline the DNS situation.

I’m very similar. Getting into self hosting and finding Lemmy happened somewhat in tandem. Now I’m happily tinkering along and looking at hosting my own instance! This comm has been a huge resource and seems very active!!

I’ve been doing this for years! My local grocery has a little scanner you can take around with you, I carry 2 wicker baskets, scan items as I fill them, and then the self checkout lane reads a code from the scanner, I tap to pay, and walk home. It’s honestly seamless.

Yeah I read all that in your other comment. But a google group for testing is a deal breaker for now. This seems super interesting and I’ll be keeping my eye on it for sure!!

Seems super interesting, but to be totally honest I won’t touch it until I don’t need anything google related to use it, but the moment it hits f-droid I’ll try it out!!!

I use Unix pass and KeePassXC before that. When I was switching I shared the concern of the names and structure of my passwords . A couple things convinced me it was fine.

First: It’s an arbitrary folder structure. You can name the folders whatever you want. Same is true for individual files. There is a field you can populate with the url the password is for, and when using browser extensions, or a mobile Unix pass manager, they use this field to check which password to offer, so the name of the encrypted file can be anything and so I often name them seemingly random things.

Second: how I chose to sync them made it kind of a non-issue. Some people literally store their password store folder on GitHub. This freaked me out a bit for the reason you are concerned, people even knowing the names of my files. The solution was to self host a git repo on my home LAN and then using Tailscale sync my devices to it from anywhere. Could also be done with syncthing, but the mobile app I use has git functionality built in. This way none of my files even touch the clear net, so I worry a lot less about people knowing the names of my passwords.

Yeah fair. A big part of my interest in it is that it split from Opera Software through a staff buyout, which to me says the people working there and maintaining it care a touch more than some companies. From the literature I consumed when signing up they seemed very privacy forward, and as a Proton VPN user I didn’t want all my eggs in one basket should Proton turn out to be a honeypot. That all being said, I agree with your point that they are subject to a legal system that doesn’t put users first compared to other countries, though for anything really sensitive I’m not really sure I would be using email to begin with, particularly not one I use for general clear net personal communication like banking and such.

Fastmail has been treating me well. Unlimited aliases and masked emails are really the only features I use, but it’s got sort of the classic suite of productivity tools you’d expect. I self host equivalents of these, but for a drop in replacement for most of the g-suite it’s good without trying to be more than it needs to be.

4get.ca has been doing well for me. You have to answer easy (and cute!) captchas periodically for bot prevention, buts it’s been stable, and results are at least as good as other options so far as I’m concerned.

Yeah agreed. I borked my repo a couple times and needed to rollback changes, re-sync everything, and resubmit changes. It was a bit scary, but that’s also kind of the beauty of the system, is it’s just files in a folder. I could move the conflicting files out, do a push/pull and then move the files back in and push. The biggest part is getting in the habit of doing a pull before I make any local changes on a device.

I haven’t heard of the tools you mentioned, but you’ve got me curious, so I’ll definitely be looking into them and a potential fix. I’m sure I could automate things with some simple scripting, but until I make my final move off iOS I’m sort of stuck with the clunky Unix Pass app on that OS which causes most of my issues.

Presumably you could just target the passwordstore folder with any version control, Unix Pass just has some git interaction built in.

I also use Unix pass and self host a git repo over Tailscale to keep it synced across devices. Works like a charm so long as I remember to push whenever I edit a password somewhere.

Another +1 for it here. Use it multiple times a day between Linux, MacOS, android, and iOS.

I have a Boox for when I want a bigger screen, and a Hisense touch (I think that’s the model). I like them both a lot. The Hisense device is also a HiFi audio player which is nice.

This is almost exactly what I’m after. Will probably pick one of these up and experiment with flashing it. The big assumption I feel like is that the keyboard just registers as a normal HID/USB device and will work with any os. Fingerprint and stuff could be fiddly, but we’ll see.

I already have my eye on doing a hotspot from the Calyx Institute and then whatever devices I fancy that have WiFi. I have a phone sized e-reader I already do this with using my phone hotspot, so I’ve considered just making that my norm.

I’ve also got my eye on a few Linux handheld projects for the same reason, and honestly I might lean toward those so I can get more modern hardware. Could potentially incorporate a usb cellular antenna with a Linux handheld to streamline the tethering process.

I recently found a window manager for Linux that is designed for phone sized displays. I’m forgetting the name at the moment, but I’ll come back and update this once I find it.

Maybe check out CalyxOS? It’s pitched as being Fairphone compatible.

I love lemmy for people like you!! Feel like this type of generosity just doesn’t show up on other platforms. OP please see this^

Any chance on getting more info about the hardware specifics? From the sounds and looks of it this is almost exactly the scale of what I’d like and running pretty much the same things I’m thinking interested in.

4get.ca lets you select your scraper among pretty much everything else listed here, and it can be themed with my preferred color scheme right out of the box, so it gets my vote.