[u-u] Odds and Ends

[David Gilbert]

On 2018-07-20 08:57, Adam Holland wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> Some odds and ends, as I tend to communicate in short, very infrequent
> bursts:
>
>  1. I'm in the process of ceasing all use of Google services this
>     summer (I'd wanted to do this since 2013/Snowden, but it was
>     beyond my skills and/or my emotional state - until now).  One
>     thing I always had a problem with is how to handle the volume of
>     certain mailing list output, especially with busier Linux
>     communities which I am subscribed to.  It is the conflict between
>     wanting those messages away from my inbox because they're not
>     directly to me (and there are lots of them!), and not wanting to
>     miss out on important announcements that I need to see, such as QA
>     release blockers which I would want to help out with asap.  Any
>     advice, or links to good suggestions would be great.
>

Obviously email is a thing, given your from address.  On that tune, may
I recomend a completely opensource ISP (me, that is).  I can get you all
the way to TorIX without any binary blobs.  As a perk, you get an email
(and, if you like) a shell account.  Again, with only open source.

That said, though, you'll want to look at devices in your life, from
complex things like phones to simple things like your router/gateway.

>  1. Is anyone aware of a service that has the functionality of Youtube
>     but which is not in the possession of a large corporation with
>     shady privacy policies?  As somebody without cable/satellite TV,
>     without Netflix and soon to be without Youtube, I'm feeling like a
>     hermit in my desire to enjoy multimedia clips and to share those
>     with my friends.  Failing that, is there currently a software
>     project I could host myself?
>

Bit Torrent with a private torrent site is pretty private.  I don't even
tend to get notices.

>  1. As per a discussion at a U-U meeting several years ago, I did try
>     NetBSD on my old SGI O2, but never installed successfully as the
>     disk partitioning was a nightmare
>     <https://gnats.netbsd.org/cgi-bin/query-pr-single.pl?number=46958>
>     to me.  I did subsequently learn of pkgsrc which could be set up
>     on IRIX to give me the compiling capability that it was lacking. 
>     At this time I am not going to dive back into IRIX, but if anyone
>     has a real need to try something out under that OS I am willing to
>     make that available as I don't know how much longer the machine
>     will remain in working order.
>

Finding an untrackable workstation is more problematic.  The best hope I
have at the momment lies in the MIPS project, but ARM is fairly open (if
not free).  Old hardware is not always the solution.  I've done pleanty
of retrocomputing in my time.  It can be rewarding for a sense of
accomplishment, but it's less so for productivity.

>  1. I never found an answer to my concern about the CheckInstall
>     <https://free-as-in-lost.blogspot.com/2017/10/checkinstall-is-unmaintained-and-broken.html>
>     software project, something I thought would be extremely wise to
>     adopt early as I explore more and more software projects that
>     require installation from source.  If anyone can offer guidance as
>     to what direction I should be looking, if not in the direction
>     which CheckInstall was going, please do.
>

Well... the answer to that is close to my heart.  Get FreeBSD.  Not
installing from source is almost harder.  And you'll have ZFS ... which
is just good.

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