Those of you who are daily driving Linux, what are your other devices? | Hacker News Reader

Those of you who are daily driving Linux, what are your other devices?

3 pointsamichae27 comments

Just wondering. I have been a long time Android user but am thinking about switching to Apple for everything except Linux on my laptop, mostly for privacy reasons (I know they aren't nearly as good as they claim but they are much better than Android from an incentives view).

I have been looking into how to integrate the Apple ecosystem with Linux and there seem to be good, albeit hacky ways to do it.

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Android is much, much more open. You can run an SSH server, run things like Termux or a full Linux VM, use more capable synchronization like Syncthing and give it real access to files you want to sync, run alternative app stores and more Open Source apps, and otherwise have more control over your device. It's not perfect, and I'm eagerly awaiting even more open options (e.g. vendors with official Graphene support), but it's remarkably decent.

Termux is great. I have my phone on the same tailnet as my home server. Easy to SSH into it, start codex in terminal, do some work/server adjustments, log out.

switching to Apple for everything except Linux on my laptop [...] better than Android

Potayto, potahto. If you monitor an iPhone (e.g. with a DNS blocking service), iPhones continously talk to Apple as well. Also they choose weak defaults to undermine privacy and security, such as not enabling ADP by default, causing iPhone iCloud backups to be encrypted at rest only.

If you are already using Linux and Android, the best thing you can probably do is to move to GrapheneOS on the phone. GrapheneOS is the most secure general purpose smartphone OS and by default it does not ship with any proprietary Google stuff except for device firmware. If you need Play Services for certain apps, then you can install it through the GrapheneOS app store. In contrast to Google-certified Android, Play Services will run inside a sandbox like any other app, severely impeding data collection that Google can do.

I run Linux almost everywhere (including TV), except for my watch (which runs Garmin's proprietary OS). Although I would love to run Linux on my watch as well, I'm fine with Garmin's OS as it's not intrusive, gets regular updates, and does its job well. I have an M1 MacBook Air as well, but that runs Linux too (in dual-boot).

And although my phone currently runs Android, I'm looking to switch to a proper Linux phone soon (Commodore Callback, running SailfishOS), hopefully by end of the year.

Of course, work laptop runs Windows, but I managed to get WSL2 enabled on it. Haven't had the chance to play with it much, but my plan is to run a full DE like KDE, and soft replace the explorer shell with it.

I'm actually in the situation of looking to exit the Apple ecosystem to an entirely Linux one.

If you look at my post history here I lost my entire Apple account due to them assuming my purchase of a 128GB Studio was fraud, and was fortunate enough to escalate to the right office to fix it.

Couple that with the age attestations coming down the pipe and I'm thinking that it's time to go ahead and complete my transition. I love the hardware, I am productive with the OS, but enough things are pushing me away that I think it's time to go Linux for the computers and GrapheneOS for the phone.

I'll have to unload the Studio, which is annoying. I have no idea what to replace it with in the Linux space. I love that machine.

What sorts of integrations are you looking for? I use a few tools:

mautrix-imessage - imessage bridge so I can send/receive messages from my Linux computers

vdirsyncer - Pulls iCloud calendar data for display in my waybar.

I also have a "headless" (the screen broke) M1 MBA. I'm using it as a bridge to my Apple ecosystem. I use EventKitCLI to pull / update reminders for example. I have a Claude Code context focused on cooking and adapting recipes. It can add stuff directly to my shopping list via a skill.

All of my personal pcs and servers are Linux. I started using Linux in 1995 because win95 was horrible when it was first released. My phone is a pixel running graphene, and i just recently switched to a garmin watch.

I was an apple user for years, but am really tired of not owning my hardware, and apple really doesnt play well with Linux.

As dumb as it may be, the final straw for me was not being able to open apple music while driving because i had to accept the updated eula on my phone before it would let me.

Im tired of corporations having more control over my technology than i do, and am willing to deal with some self imposed friction to avoid it.

Imo, apple makes much better hardware, but im tired of being forced to use gimped software that they have to approve.

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