Any e-mail service that doesn’t provide standard IMAP/SMTP directly to their servers and uses custom protocols is yet another attempt at vendor lock-in and nobody should use it.
What Proton is doing is pushing for vendor lock-in at any possible point so you’re stuck with what they deem acceptable because it’s easier for them to build a service this way and makes more sense from a business / customer retention perspective. Proton is doing to e-mail about the same that WhatsApp and Messenger did to messaging - instead of just using an open protocol like XMPP they opted for their closed thing in order to lock people into their apps. People in this community seem to be okay with this just because they sell the “privacy” cool-aid.
People complain when others use Google or Microsoft for e-mail around here, but at least in those providers you can access your e-mail through standard protocols. How ironic it is to see privacy / freedom die hard fans suddenly going for a company that is far less open than the big providers… just because of marketing. :)
Proton is just a company that wants profits and found out there was a niche of people who would buy into everything that they label as “encryption” and “privacy” no matter what the cost. They’ve learnt how to weaponize “privacy” to push more and more vendor lock-in. Not even Apple does this bullshit.
Now, I can see anyone commenting "oh but they have to it because of security" - no they don't. That's bullshit.
Any generic IMAP/SMPT provider + Thunderbird + PGP will provide the same level of security that Proton does - that is assuming they didn’t mess their client-side encryption/decryption or key storage in some way. PGP makes sure all your e-mail content is encrypted and that’s it, doesn’t matter if it’s done by Thunderbird and the e-mails are stored in Gmail OR if it’s done by the Proton bridge and the e-mails are on their servers, the same PGP tech the only difference is the client. So, no, there isn't the reason to do it the way they do it besides vendor lock-in.
It's funny how people completely lost their minds when they could see a potential connection between what he said and some political side while those same people are perfectly fine with ignoring what's really wrong with Proton and its marketing - even though it all goes against their core beliefs of "privacy" "security" "open-source" etc.
Edit to include what I didn't have time to type:
Any e-mail service that doesn’t provide standard IMAP/SMTP directly to their servers and uses custom protocols is yet another attempt at vendor lock-in and nobody should use it.
What Proton is doing is pushing for vendor lock-in at any possible point so you’re stuck with what they deem acceptable because it’s easier for them to build a service this way and makes more sense from a business / customer retention perspective. Proton is doing to e-mail about the same that WhatsApp and Messenger did to messaging - instead of just using an open protocol like XMPP they opted for their closed thing in order to lock people into their apps. People in this community seem to be okay with this just because they sell the “privacy” cool-aid.
People complain when others use Google or Microsoft for e-mail around here, but at least in those providers you can access your e-mail through standard protocols. How ironic it is to see privacy / freedom die hard fans suddenly going for a company that is far less open than the big providers… just because of marketing. :)
Proton is just a company that wants profits and found out there was a niche of people who would buy into everything that they label as “encryption” and “privacy” no matter what the cost. They’ve learnt how to weaponize “privacy” to push more and more vendor lock-in. Not even Apple does this bullshit.
Now, I can see anyone commenting “oh but they have to it because of security” - no they don’t. That’s bullshit.
Any generic IMAP/SMPT provider + Thunderbird + PGP will provide the same level of security that Proton does - that is assuming they didn’t mess their client-side encryption/decryption or key storage in some way. PGP makes sure all your e-mail content is encrypted and that’s it, doesn’t matter if it’s done by Thunderbird and the e-mails are stored in Gmail OR if it’s done by the Proton bridge and the e-mails are on their servers, the same PGP tech the only difference is the client. So, no, there isn’t the reason to do it the way they do it besides vendor lock-in.
This is amazing. People were perfectly okay with ignoring all the red flags in Proton and their products and really okay with buying all their bullshit, then a tweet saying Trump comes up and that's it. lol
Yet another year, yet another "this is going to be the year of the Linux desktop".
What would make Linux actually work out was if GNOME got their shit together instead of wasting time and resources on pointless stuff. Another big thing with Linux would be if someone could get some vendor like Lenovo to open all their ARM tablets, implement an UEFI like they should have from the start and provide basic drivers.
Linux is useless for the majority of regular users, at least for work, because you don't have xyz proprietary software, however it could work out well as a home machine for web surfing and simple documents. People would probably be happy to buy cheap ~200$ tablets from Lenovo and get a full desktop experience from those.
Get them as big as possible (wallet allows to), because you'll get quickly annoyed at having multiple smaller drives. You'll have to deal with more space, more cables, more power, more sata expansion, more heat etc.
Flatpak doesn’t have an “ask for permission” system afaik, at least not standardized.
Exactly, and that's precisely the reason why it's still not a viable solution for the average user. This a big problem and a problem of consistent and integration between Flatpak , GNOME, KDE etc.
Note that the adapter on the link does not actually use the USB protocol. It's still PCIe sent over a USB 3.0 cable that is good enough for the job. But not actually USB, there are no signal / protocol conversions happening.
This is a decent setup if you want to leave the Mini PC intact, with the case and all because it allows you to route the PCIe to outside of the machine using a somewhat solid cable that you can run through a small hole OR the optional port slot (VGA on this machine):
The VGA card can be removed so you have a big hole to pass the "USB" cable through.
Sure, just try to get a password manager to communicate with a browser both on Flatpaks. Things like that should work, that's what people expect, or at least should prompt the user for permission to communicate like Apple does.
There are A LOT of ways to convert the M2/NVME slots into SATA ports, some you can get hundreds of hard drives there if you need.
In fact, I already have a mini PC (an MSI Cubi 2 with an i3-7100) that I sometimes use. I’m sure it’s fairly power-efficient, but again, it only has room for one 2.5" HDD, which limits its usefulness for a NAS setup :(
what happens if something breaks. Is there any warranty?
If you exclude the Chinese brands (including Lenovo) it is very, very unlikely that a Mini HP or Dell will break in your hands anytime soon. Some even come with extended warranties from companies that bought them and you'll be able to ask HP for help. But frankly I wouldn't bother with this, those machines are good hardware designed for 24h7 operation and will not break easily.
Totally, but that won't be a problem if you're 8th+ gen right now. I've had experiences like you describe with a Core 2 Duo about two years ago, even SSH was taking ages to connect because the CPU lacked some modern instruction for ECDH.
I believe you should buy second hand hardware for that. Can't beat the price and you've tons of gamers and offices trying to get rid of perfectly good hardware for what you're trying to do. I mean a 8th gen i5 CPU will most likely be idle or in low usage most of the time.
I would say to buy i5-8500T or more recent (because you can run a full machine on 8W on that). You can either go for a micro ATX motherboard with that and RAM second hand OR pick an HP Mini ProDesk with the same CPU, both options will be about 130€. Check this example.
The thing with the Minis from HP is that they come with everything, NVME, power supply, ram and ready to go. Most of those more recent machines come with 2x NVME + 1 SATA + USB-C.
If you're comfortable with taking the board out of the case you can place it anywhere and add a M2 to SATA adapter on both NVME slots for about 22€ each and have like 12 SATA HDDs connected to it. If you don't want mess with the hardware you can get a USB DAS for your disks, since it's all USB-C you will not notice any performance impact.
Those machines will outperform your CPU pick by a lot while being cheaper and power efficient on idle.
Any e-mail service that doesn’t provide standard IMAP/SMTP directly to their servers and uses custom protocols is yet another attempt at vendor lock-in and nobody should use it.
What Proton is doing is pushing for vendor lock-in at any possible point so you’re stuck with what they deem acceptable because it’s easier for them to build a service this way and makes more sense from a business / customer retention perspective. Proton is doing to e-mail about the same that WhatsApp and Messenger did to messaging - instead of just using an open protocol like XMPP they opted for their closed thing in order to lock people into their apps. People in this community seem to be okay with this just because they sell the “privacy” cool-aid.
People complain when others use Google or Microsoft for e-mail around here, but at least in those providers you can access your e-mail through standard protocols. How ironic it is to see privacy / freedom die hard fans suddenly going for a company that is far less open than the big providers… just because of marketing. :)
Proton is just a company that wants profits and found out there was a niche of people who would buy into everything that they label as “encryption” and “privacy” no matter what the cost. They’ve learnt how to weaponize “privacy” to push more and more vendor lock-in. Not even Apple does this bullshit.
Now, I can see anyone commenting "oh but they have to it because of security" - no they don't. That's bullshit.
Any generic IMAP/SMPT provider + Thunderbird + PGP will provide the same level of security that Proton does - that is assuming they didn’t mess their client-side encryption/decryption or key storage in some way. PGP makes sure all your e-mail content is encrypted and that’s it, doesn’t matter if it’s done by Thunderbird and the e-mails are stored in Gmail OR if it’s done by the Proton bridge and the e-mails are on their servers, the same PGP tech the only difference is the client. So, no, there isn't the reason to do it the way they do it besides vendor lock-in.