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oday we announced the Mullvad Browser - built by the Tor Project. A browser allowing anyone to take advantage of the privacy protections of Tor Browser without Tor.
👀 Learn more here: blog.torproject.org/releasing-

I met someone else on campus who has a #librem5

I think this qualifies for the highest concentration of L5's/campus.

I'm not writing an entire blog post about how stupid a US TikTok ban would be because this is all that needs to be said:

If the Chinese government is in your threat model, don’t install TikTok on your device. Otherwise, your actual problem is surveillance capitalism.

It's that time again - your Linux Phone News Roundup from your friends at FOSSphones!
This roundup, we look at some updates from the Mobian and Ubuntu Touch projects, new updates to Phosh, and more!
Check it out at the link below, or on our Gemini capsule.
https://fossphones.com/03-17-23.html

I'm pretty sure Mastodon is the first social network I've been on that didn't immediately ask me to betray all of the people in my address book.

Overall, I really love the Librem. It is a vast improvement over the pinephone/pinephonepro. I liked my pinephones also, but the librem is just a much better phone.
I am starting my third year with a linux phone and I have no plans of going back. Especially now that I have the librem.
This phone is almost to the point that I could recommend it to some people. I am hopeful that by the end of this year, I might actually could start to recommed it.

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Also, updates that improve the phone rather than slow it down. I saw this with the pinephone also. The updates improved battery life and performance over time.
Removeable battery, wifi card, and modem. The modularity of the phone makes it so that it can be upgraded overtime. Already, I have the upgraded wireless card that they started shipping at first of the year. This is apparently one of the things that they have done that has improved battery life as well as performance.

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Now the good.
It runs Linux. Not android, not iOS, Linux.
It is not laden down with spyware. I don't get creepy ads about something I just talked about.
It is convergent also. I was able to hook up a keyboard, mouse and monitor so that I could remote into a clients computer and assist them from my phone.
Hardware kill switches. I can physically turn off the modem, wifi, bluetooth, camera, and microphone using hardware kill switches.

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Finally, I have been unable to get my wifi hotspot to work, and my vpn connects but it doesn't seem as if my internet is going through the vpn when on cellular. I haven't tried it on wifi yet.
The weird thing is that the wifi hotspot kind of works if I tell it to use the vpn for internet. At that point, it seems somewhat like a dns issue, but I am not sure yet.

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Third is modem drops. Even while typing this thread, I lost internet connection and had to disable the modem and re-enable it to get it back.
There have been times that the modem showed connected but someone standing right beside me tried to call me and the call would not go through. Disabling and re-enabling the modem fixes the issue and I all of a sudden receive a bunch of texts then also.
Occasionally, the modem completely disappears and a full reboot is the only way to get it back.

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Second is call quality. Again coming from the pinephonepro, call quality is amazing! I can have long conversations with people and they can understand me without hearing an echo of their own voice! That said, I have had complaints of crackling static on the other end (my end is clear). The crackling seems worse when I am driving, so there might be some interference generated by the car. Also, most people think that I have them on speaker phone even when I do not.

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First the bad. I start with the bad because overall, I really love this phone.
Battery life. If you are coming from the pinephone like I am, it is great. If you are coming from any other phone, it is abismal. From what I understand, it is tremendously improved from even a couple of months ago, but it still has a long way to go.

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I'm back. You probably didn't miss me, but I took an unplanned month long hiatus from the world. I did not read or watch the news nor did I read any social media.
Two unrelated things worked together to cause this. I started a new position at work that has kept me pretty busy. More importantly though, I finally got my !!!!
Getting the Librem has been a lot of fun. I just today got around to installing tootle so that I can get on Mastodon. Following, will be my thoughts on the Librem.

I'm generally against instances blocking and muting people, but I'm 100% in favor of doing it myself.

The difference between me and the typical #fediblock #fediblockmeta stan is that if there's content that's offensive or hurts my feelings, I block the account. If one of the stans comes across objectionable or controversial content, they'll demand that the entire #fediblock #fediblockmeta community block the instances or account.

My experience on free speech instances is wonderful specifically because of the blocks I've instated. And I forgot how wild and reckless the federated timeline on the free speech portion of the #Fediverse is until I convinced a #Fediverse user to try out social.teci.world in order to test #Soapbox lol

I wrote a blog post about the dangers of focusing too much on hardware specs to predict performance when choosing hardware. In my experience many other factors (such as the software the hardware will run) have much more of an impact. Focusing on specs alone incentivizes bad practices like planned obsolescence and disposable hardware.

puri.sm/posts/the-danger-of-fo

Today marks four years since I ordered my Librem 5. I am still excited about it, though simewhat disheartened that it has taken this long. Hoping to see it soon.

Dear foss freelancer, what do you use to bill your clients ? I would prefer a local only tool but a self hosted solution would be okay. Something simple and minimalist. Without Javascript as much as possible. Ideally GPL

repeats appreciated

If your instance is blocking an instance with folks you'd like to still read, you can add any Mastodon account to your feed reader (I like NetNewsWire myself) by using the following formula:

instance.name/@user.rss

#feditips #rss #mastodontips #feeds #fediverse #twittermigration #migration

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