Michael Larabel writes about the newest Framework 13 with AMD Ryzen AI 300 “Strix Point” CPUs. Thanks for letting us know about it, Michael!
Goodbye Firefox, hello Librewolf
Enough is enough. The Mozilla Corporation has lost it, see here for instance.
Thankfully, there’s Librewolf. I had enabled its repository in Debian already, and had it installed both there and in Arch Linux – tho in the latter I recently had decided to get rid of all AUR packes and their yay helper tool, for Librewolf I now made an exception – so I reinstalled (cloned from git) yay, and using it, reinstalled librewolf-bin. I hope that the Arch package maintainers soon decide to make Librewolf (plus the precompiled -bin file) one of their supported packages, so that I won’t need the AUR (Arch User Repository) for that.
Now I wonder if soon I’ll have to do the same with Thunderbird, and replace that as well (with Betterbird for instance?). Sigh…
Update from Monday, 3rd of March 2025: see here as well…
RIP DivestOS…
Oh my – bad news from last December which I saw only now: Tavi, lead and sole developer of DivestOS (see Wikipedia EN, DE) announced in his project news that he ends support of the project immediately:
“I believe the projects were highly successful in their goals, however this month will mark the end. DivestOS and its apps will not receive any further updates.”
Very sad news indeed, as this was the one project which saved us all from throwing away our old devices, keeping up updates and thus, security as long as it could. Which means that from now on we have to rely solely on the time span provided by our hardware vendors like Apple, Google, Samsung, or Xiaomi to name a few. And even GrapheneOS, the most secure system of them all only supports (google only) devices only as long as hardware vendors (of the internals, like Qualcomm and others) do. After that, they’re toxic waste.
Maybe it’s time to go back to dumb phones next time, me thinks – for those of us who really need mobile phones at all (I certainly don’t). Let’s see.
As always, thanks for reading.
2025
A new year has started, but there isn’t that much to report, or so I think.
This is the year that Microsoft will stop supporting their operating system Windows 10, so everyone including the ARD and the CCC are recommending to upgrade rather sooner than later, and if Microsoft thinks that your machine isn’t fit for Windows 11, try Linux instead. I still remember that old joke where someone wrote: “The box said to install Windows 7 or better – so I installed Linux” 😉
Yesterday one year ago I bought a fitness tracker, and started to investigate in free software for it, using Gadgetbridge since January 10th, 2024. You can search this page for the term “Xiaomi” in case you’re interested. The main thing for me is the step counting, and that my data isn’t saved in some 3rd party cloud, neither in China nor in the USA. Anyway, since last year I have now walked over 4.2 million steps, so that’s a bit more than 10,000 steps a day, and I’m planning to continue this. With a step length of about 75cm, that would sum up to over 3,100km so far, so I’d say that I’d have covered Europe by now… and maybe reach my father-in-law’s after some 3 years or so 😉
What else is new? Oh, I volunteered to assist with the upcoming elections here in Germany. In case you’re not sure whom to vote for, from 6th of February you could consult the “Wahl-O-Mat” again. What would also help to reach informed decisions is to stop living in your “filter bubble“, or “Filterblase” like we say here in Germany. So it could help to stop using search engines which belong to giant companies, and also to avoid (a-) social media sites and services which belong to tech billionaires, like my friend Peter just did – bravo to him!
So – let’s hope that this year will be better than the last one, and that we can continue using more and more renewable energy; Germany is on a good way here even if we broke the 1.5° barrier already. So don’t throw away your old PCs which I mentioned above, and also your old mobile phones – use alternative operating systems instead, and save money and toxic waste. I wish us all a good new year 2025.
And like always, thanks for reading.
… and Gnome updates keep breaking things …
Same old, same old… in Arch Linux, I just got Gnome version 47, codenamed “Denver” which appears to have been released yesterday. And at first sight I thought that everything seemed okay, nothing broken. But no:
The Gnome extensions site simply marks it as “outdated“, so I added a comment onto the existing Github issue of the extension.
Always the same with these Gnome developers… thanks for reading.
Perhaps the best choice for Linux newbies?
I have a sister who still owns an older notebook which runs Windows 7, and a friend from England who just moved from a Windows 8 to a Windows 10 machine. Both machines wouldn’t run Win11 I guess, tho I didn’t ask. You don’t recommend that to friends anyway.
So what to recommend? Linux of course, yes, but which one? Liam Proven (and many others) think it’s Mint. From his article in The Register, let me just cite these two sentences:
“Linux Mint remains the most sensible, pragmatic desktop Linux out there.” and, a bit further down, “If you have an aging PC that can’t run Windows 11, this is the one to try.”
One remark tho: Mint’s website, documentation, and all are really cool as well – as long as you speak English fluently enough. Maybe the user base could be much bigger if these pages were localized, like Debian’s for instance? Just saying…
For my late brother, using Debian – with a little help of myself – wasn’t a problem, but for any beginner who doesn’t have more “expert” friends or relatives, Mint might really be the sensible choice for now. Try it in a VM if you have the resources to do so, and if not, have a look at the Live image which you can start from a USB stick. One thing it *does* have as an advantage over its grandma Debian is the possibility of an OEM install (like “Mama” Ubuntu offers as well), so I could offer an installation to my sis or to close friends…
Anyway, have a look. It’s better than Win11, as are all other Linux distros.
Gadgetbridge 0.81.0
Cool thing of today: got an update of Gadgetbridge to version 0.81.0 on my phone, which now brings a Dashboard. Looks like this:
Thanks devs – and thanks to you for reading.
Short update regarding the Xiaomi Smart Band 8 and Gadgetbridge
Okay, second night with my fitness tracker, and Gadgetbridge shows light sleep for almost 8 hours (and also a few counted steps in the flat). After reading a bit more about the software, I’ve changed my weather provider on the phone to “Tiny Weather Forecast Germany” which comes from our official DWD (Deutscher Wetterdienst) site who are also reporting to Tagesschau and other official media. That one is nicely integrated with Gadgetbridge, so that my fitness tracker now shows the temperatures as reported by DWD, instead of some unknown Chinese service.
I also changed my phone’s navigation system from Organic Maps to OsmAnd~ which is supported by Gadgetbridge (even Google Maps is supported, but any Google services is what I’m trying to avoid with all this). I have not yet tried any “Activities” or “Workouts” which would make use of map tracking, but I will do that soon (next on my list in fact).
Anyway, it’s nice to know that communications only occur between my own devices now, and that *nothing* goes to some unknown “cloud services” (aka other peoples’ computers). Except of course the fact that my phone gets the weather from DWD, so it also has to tell them where I am to keep that correct. That’s unavoidable, but I can live with that…
And like always, thanks for reading.
Update to this update 😉
Just saw that the battery status was different on the device and in the software, so I submitted a bug report against Gadgetbridge. See here.
And another update to this update (of the update) 😉
Yup; tracking works. First I didn’t exactly know how to *get it working*, so I tried with the Mi Fitness app first, but later found out how to view the “workout” in OsmAnd~. Here is how that looks:
In the Mi Fitness screenshot, I had to take out my “customer number” (or whatever they call your digit-only user number at Xiaomi), so I airbrushed that out with The Gimp. Gadgetbridge and OsmAnd~ show nothing personal, except of course the area where we live. Took the small inner round through our “Wohnpark” in the Mi Fitness image, the bigger around the block walk in Gadgetbridge/OsmAnd~.
You can also export a .gpx file from Gadgetbridge, which is what I did to import it into Gnome Maps on my desktop – looks like this (with a shorter walk):
Not bad for “experimental”, is it? Again, thanks for reading and for viewing.
First look: Xiaomi Smart Band 8
Yesterday I bought a fitness tracker. My wife and daughter both have one since long, and I started counting my steps when I first got an iPhone from the company, and later the used Google Pixel 4a from my wife. And while counting steps with a phone is good, and all that most people would probably need, I still also wanted those steps when I do *not* carry my phone, plus having a look at some other statistics like sleep tracking and so on.
Both Mitchie and Zuleikha (or Aki, which she prefers) are using FitBit devices. Mitchie lost her Charge 4 last year and got the Charge 5 soon afterwards, Aki has her Inspire 2 since about that time (or a bit earlier). But I didn’t want to go the Google route, and here’s why. Mike Kuketz, a German security consultant once mentioned an open source tracker software which doesn’t send every measurement to the big clouds for their analysis, so I was interested in that program called “Gadgetbridge” since a while. The best supported devices are those from Huami (aka Amazfit) and Xiaomi which use Huami’s “Zepp” app, but since the last update to Gadgetbridge, even some newer devices which use different protocols are supported – see here.
So my initial plan was to get a Xiaomi Smart Band 7 or an Amazfit Band 7, both of which originally use that Zepp app, and both being able to be used with Gadgetbridge instead. However, at our local electronics chain store, only the newer Xiaomi Smart Band 8 was offered, so I took that one instead. And to make matters short (or TL;DR in “modern” speech): no, I haven’t got it running with Gadgetbridge yet (support *is* still experimental), but I’m still glad I got this one, even tho it feels a bit strange to have a secure system like GrapheneOS, and then to install Xiaomi’s Mi Fitness software onto it – but in the long run, this will most probably change.
So what is it like? Well it counts my steps (and less than the free and open source “Paseo” software on the phone before, but it’s said to be pretty accurate), it also tracks my sleep, counts my heart beats, blood oxygen, and all that stuff – what most of these devices do. The Xiaomi software is pretty colourful, as are the hundreds of watch faces you can install with a single click. Here are some screenshots of the software running on my phone:
In case you want a comparison of some of these devices, here is a German one from FitForFun, and the guys from Heise’s Techstage had an almost similar result. But of course they don’t even think about using said devices with free and open source software, so choose wisely. Of the older generation (compatible with Zepp apps and such with Gadgetbridge, except the Huawei device), there’s also a nice video, also in German, here.
I will report more later, since I have the device more or less since a single day only, and this is my first one (although I can compare it to those FitBits, and to be honest, Aki was a bit jealous about that Goose watchface you could choose for mine)… 😉
Like always, thanks for reading.
Update, later on the same day:
Got Gadgetbridge working by now on the Pixel 6a (had tried it on the 3a before). And I’m still exploring it of course, but here’s a first screenshot from the phone:
So for the moment I’ll have deactivated Xiaomi’s app and this one active instead. Switched the battery usage from ‘Unrestricted’ to ‘Optimised’, because this doesn’t have to be active when I don’t want it to. So let’s see how this develops. But I’m glad that I’ve been successful.
And again, thanks for reading.
To whom it might concern: GrapheneOS added Android Auto
Happy new year again.
Forgot to tell you that with two updates from December 30th and 31st, GrapheneOS now added Android Auto if you can make use of it (we can’t; our car is a year or so too old for that). An article on 9to5Google reminded me of it, and here are the release notes from GOS.
And unlike stated in 9to5Google, my Pixel 6a which is on the GrapheneOS “stable channel” got it already. But since our car can’t do it, and I haven’t switched on any (sandboxed) Google services, it’s of no big deal for us. But if your car can make use of it, enjoy.
Thanks to Daniel Micay and his team over at GOS. And like always, thanks for reading.