I did not know that. Might have to double dip. I have it on switch, but encouraging Linux game ports with my wallet seems worthwhile. Plus it wouldn’t be the first time I bought a second copy of a game…

Recent convert myself. And now that I’ve experienced mail, calendar, notes, and file storage all in the same app (android, at least) I can’t go back to separate apps.

That and not being shown ads in my damn inbox is what lead me to the hunt for a better provider than Gmail. Another I just remembered about Proton that I didn’t care for (and there may be a way to opt out) is the amount of promotional notifications/emails I’d get for their other services. Not as bad as NordVPN, but then again I don’t think anyone is as bad as them regarding self-promotion. I’m happy to pay for a service if it means retaining some more privacy but mostly get rid of ads but the constant need to upsell was getting to me.

It does seem snappier. But damn, I’ve come to love Fastmail’s all-in-one app. Having calendar, notes, contacts and files all in the email app is something I didn’t realize I’d care about but not sure I can do without now.

I did hear about that. But haven’t tried it yet. I’ll check it out, thanks!

I tried both. Proton email client on Android at least was awful. Super sluggish to navigate. In fact I have a chunk of credit with them because I cancelled too late to get a refund. No idea what I’m going to do with that. I already have a VPN and a Pwd manager…

Fastmail has been snappy and I like that the app has a notes section for quick jotting of ideas. I also like that Rclone can attach directly to Fastmail files. They just recently added Proton Drive support too though.

Excellent points. I haven’t tried it yet, but the app Hermit has sandboxing as well and creates PWA-type apps out of websites. I’ve been using it for self hosted services that don’t have and Android app component to them. Works reasonably well but I’m not trying to hide info…from myself :)

Ah Kijiji was the other app I was trying to think of. These are good points. It really is frustrating that so many have migrated to using Marketplace instead of the alternatives.

So your vote is “no”? Got it.

It went great, actually. Very easy to build in. I did end up taking the bottom panel off to make part of the install easier. Cooling seems to be really solid. It can get a bit loud when gaming due to the way shape of the vent holes in the side of the case, but I usually have headphones on anyway… Much quieter if I were to leave the right door off (CPU side), but obviously not an option. The thing is dead silent in normal usage, the fans only really kick on for me during game sessions.

Not a bad idea. I get picky about aesthetics though. Dumb, I know. But I’ll give it a try. Just seems silly to me that default launchers can’t manage editing the dang app shortcuts

edit: Samsungs OneUI launcher does not put the badge on a PWA. But I’m not sure I trust them any more than Nova at this point…

I haven’t found one that I like as much. My biggest hangup, and this is probably dumb, is the ability to edit the icons for PWAs so they don’t show the stupid browser icon that screams “I’m a web shortcut!!!”. I tried Hermit as a PWA/lite app replacement and Android just slaps the hermit badge on it instead. For whatever reason that annoys me enough to stick with Nova.

Acreom Not FOSS yet, but on their road map. So I’m keeping an eye on it. Still plain markdown files at its core. One deal breaker for me is that they require a login for Mobile app, at least Android. Which makes no sense to me. They advertise “local first” and “no account required” on their site, yet you can’t use the mobile app without signing into their service. If they ever stop being silly about that part, I may take another look. Their task management and to-do is better than anything I’ve found in Obsidian to date.

The app is not. That said, since it’s literally a front end for markdown files, the file format is universal and can be opened on anything with a text editor. No conversion or export needed.

I know some folks won’t use it if it’s not FOSS, and I respect that decision. For me there isn’t an open source alternative that is as good. Joplin stores your data in an SQL file, that’s a deal breaker for me. Logseq seems to be so outline/task oriented that I’ve not been able to use it the way I want to.

Obsidian for sure. Look at the Excalidraw plugin for handwriting/drawing. It’s quite good.

I’d pay the $10/yr premium if you can swing it. The emergency contact recovery feature alone was more than worth it to me.

For 2FA, I highly recommend Aegis. I switched from both Google and Microsoft authenticator apps earlier this year and it’s been great. I have the backups running automatically and it dumps it into a folder the Seafile is syncing for me. So not only do I have the backups on the server, but on the clients as well. Seafile is then backed up to an encrypted B2 bucket for further redundancy.

I guess my point is that in your example, Joplin is the same. The feature hidden behind a paywall is for them to host the sync function for you. Both Joplin and Obsidian offer that. Yet you can roll your own method using Syncthing, Nextcloud, etc for either of them. If it’s FOSS or not that’s a deal breaker, I get it. I gave Obsidian a pass in that regard since the file format is so wide open and universal.

You may want to keep an eye out on these two as well. Both are missing some features now, but have them on their roadmap:

Acreom

• not open source yet, but planned
• no E2EE, but planned
• can’t self host the mobile app side of things, but the desktop versions work without an account and use markdown file format like Obsidian (and others)

Notesnook

• Open source
• E2EE
• Can’t self host yet, but on the roadmap. The dev confirmed to me that there would be no fee tacked on for self hosters once released, something that either Standard Notes or Simple Note does (can’t remember which).

How is it freemium? You either pay them to “host” your files or you don’t. There is no other cost involved. IIRC, Joplin Cloud is a similar set up if you’re not equipped to selfhost or just don’t want to. It’s not FOSS, sure. But it’s a hierarchy of flat markdown files that can be read by any text editor on any OS. Making extracting your data very simple. Joplin stores your notes in a database file that requires an export or conversion function to get it back out, should they go out of business, etc. The database and the absolutely horrible Android app is what had me give up on Joplin entirely. If it’s working for you thats great. I’m certainly not trying to convince anyone. My use case requires easy, universal access to my notes. And .md files in folders is the lowest friction way I can think of. I’m currently paying for Sync, but once my year is up I’m going to try Syncthing again or the CouchDB sync plugin to save money. $8/mo is too much.

Links: Wallabag, if you don’t want to self host it’s very cheap to have them do it.

Text: Obsidian, but I’m also playing with Notesnook

Images: Immich

The text apps I listed are the only ones that could be considered “offline” though.

I stopped using them because their Android app is absolute dog shit. But I would trust them more than Google.

I’m really liking Pop!_OS, but I am far from an expert. Big draw to me is that is very unWIndowslike as far as UI go. And the auto tiling is slick, but you can implement that on pretty much any distro I believe. I tried EndeavourOS as well, but since it’s Arch based it was a bit too different than what I’m used to. I have two VPS running Ubuntu 20.04 LTS and since Pop is Ubuntu based it was more familiar. Pop also has a Nvidia specific image.

The new Debian-based Mint looks neat as well, but for now I’m very content with Pop.

Do it! I just did and I’m loving it.

I should mention it’s not a free app. But it has the best handwriting recognition I’ve ever seen. I write worse than a toddler and it still converts without fail to the correct text. If I can sync without using Dropbox and Drive, I’d be fine using it as Samsung Notes alternative

The Obsidian plug-in Exaclidraw does support it with a script add on, but seemingly only supports Windows Surface pens…which is lame. Nebo is another app I’m looking at. But it can only sync with Google Drive and Dropbox. I haven’t looked into the local files to see if it can manage a Syncthing type scenario between my tablet and phone yet, but I intend to. Nebo’s eraser works by holding the s-pen button down and drawing over what you want gone. Not sure if that’s exactly what you want. I may have to add a feature request to Saber :)

May have to go this route. The excalidraw plugin seems to work reasonably well and I already use Obsidian.

It can do S-pen notes?

So…you’re gonna love this… It was my effin’ AdguardHome instances blocking some domain required for the Cloud backup to work. Found that by accident while having my Linux desktop connected via NordVPN, which as you may know has no UI so I just plan forgot to disconnect. Played the game, realized it saved, but went to try to play on SD, but nope. Still won’t pull the latest save. So i disabled my primary and secondary AGH instances, tried again, and everything is sunshine and lollypops.

So I added the following to AGH custom filtering rules in order to allow all of these:

@@||steampowered.com^
@@||steamcommunity.com^
@@||steamgames.com^
@@||steamusercontent.com^
@@||steamcontent.com^
@@||steamstatic.com^
@@||akamaihd.net^

I feel a bit dumb now…

Yeah, now I just need to find a privacy conscious alternative to Samsung Notes! ;)

I may have to give up on my Nextcloud hate and run Saber. It really is a great app. Just a shame to tie it to only one service.

ah geez, you can on mine too. I just didn’t scroll down far enough. All I saw were the Samsung specific shortcuts!

Agreed, I’m on a Note10+ and I love that feature. I’d setting for being able to add 3rd party app shortcuts to the little side bar thing…not sure what that’s called, but it pops up when you pull the S Pen out. That wouldn’t replace the screen off function, but would be a step in the right direction.

No, unfortunately it did not. I cleared them out with steam closed on both my PC and the SD, then launched it. On PC it gave the following error:

I then copied the backed up saves back to the correct folder and launched it again. Still got the same error but selected “Play Anyway”. Current game save loaded fine. Then create a new save and exited the game. Now back to the Cloud Sync error in Steam on PC. Steam Deck shows Steam Cloud: Up To Date but if I load the most recent save it’s several behind the current. As in, current saves are just missing entirely.

Fair point, do you have any in mind?

You know what’s great? I had toggled the cloud save off last night and actually had Syncthing running between the two. Works rather well. But today I toggled them back on, played a bit, and let it sync. Sure enough it worked! Good grief. If it acts up again I’ll do as you suggested and wipe and start over with backed up saves. I did have an issue in Starfield where it would give the same error that it couldn’t sync, yet it did. But I’m not touching that one for awhile. Either that sync mess or something else pooched my 20+hr save and it won’t load. Nor will it load any save right now. Just crashes straight to desktop unless you start New Game. Oh well, got that one for ‘free’ with my PC build so not too worried about it other than I likely won’t ever touch it again…

Thanks for the explanation on symlinks, that helps quite a bit!

EDIT: jokes on me, still doesn’t work.

Ah beans, I did make a type. You are correct, it does have 1091500 in the path. Don’t know how I missed that. Likely because I was connected via SSH and changing directory and apparently it only shows the current folder instead of the whole string like I’m accustomed to.

The correct path for SD is: /home/deck/.steam/steam/steamapps/compatdata/1091500/pfx/drive_c/users/steamuser/Saved Games/CD Projekt Red/Cyberpunk 2077

Side note, and maybe a dumb question: How can you tell it’s a symlink? I’m still very new to Linux but having a blast learning.

The game is installed on Pop!_OS, ext4 file system. Windows came, so proton has the save games in a weird spot. I did notice it’s different than the location of steam deck.

Pop!_OS: ~/.steam/steam/steamapps/compatdata/1091500/pfx/drive_c/steamuser/Saved Games/CD Projekt Red/Cyberpunk 2077

Steam Deck: ~/.local/share/Steam/steamapps/compatdata/pfx/drive_c/users/steamuser/Saved Games/CD Projekt Red/Cyberpunk 2077

What’s weird is that it synchronized at least some saves form early in the game. But now it is continually failing to sync. I fired up a few indie games just last night and those synchronized just fine. Fates of Ort and Void Scrapper, if it matters ;)

I’ve heard that. Boy does it need it. But I’ll admit I don’t like that their focus seems to be on introducing new products instead of making their existing lineup more reliable/performant. And not making many strides in the Linux world.

I tried Proton, even paid for a year. But hot damn the Android app is garbage. So I’ve moved to Fastmail and I like it a lot. The app is snappy and I love that it has calendar, contacts, mail, notes, and files storage all in the same app. I used a custom domain with Proton so wasn’t hard to switch to a different provider. Just wish I would’ve known how bad the mobile app was before I plunked down the money.

Yeah, that is very true. For some reason I had in my mind that they were all in vaguely the same place. But then remembered 2 of the 3 games I mentioned in my original post are Windows only so the proton layer adds yet another location to consider to the mix. I’ll have to think on it more. I tend to focus on one of two games at a time until I’m done with them, so might not be too bad to sync just those titles then reconsider when another games strikes my fancy…

Won’t hurt to try, eh? Damn saves aren’t copying at all now, so its useless atm.

Yeah, that was the original idea. Peer to peer, which is Syncthing’s selling point. I certainly could link my server into play as well just to keep an always online device in the mix. Though I never turn my PC off either :)