There is one called FairEmail. While it technically has a pro version (one time purchase), but most of the needed features are available on the free tier. Plus it’s available on F Droid as well, so that’s a plus and is continuously maintained.

I think my first distro was Ubuntu ( but that was because everyone around me was using it only) before I finally migrated to Debian less than a year later. Mint and Ubuntu both use Debian as their base. (Mint technically uses Ubuntu as it’s base but has a Debian edition as well for backup reasons).

I know Debian’s problem is it’s software repos(Debian Stable can be filled with older versions of software). But it can’t be denied that it is rock solid (for most part), has a comparatively decent set of software in its repos and a large set of distros use it as their base.

Configuring one’s system to always login as root in Linux is significantly easier than rooting an Android phone. One needs to know their way to root their phone and spend significant amount of time tinkering with it so that everything works properly.

As for malicious apps, there are many such apps on the Play Store as well. In fact, I would argue that the safest distribution channel is F Droid and not Play Store.

I can’t speak for foreign banks but for banks in my country, they have a problem that is way way worse than any Android stuff can solve ( read: giving access to your account only via SINGLE password and only asking for SMS OTP when transaction is done; and of course no hardware key support). I don’t wish my banking data to be less secure than a WordPress account!

If one donates to Soulseek( on their official website a certain amount), they get privileges. If you have privileges, then your downloads will be queued ahead of other users (basically you side step a long queue for downloading).

I use Nicotine, and when I open the client, it shows for a couple of seconds at the bottom/tray No active Soulseek privileges before vanishing. That’s the only clue.

In practise, my downloads usually go through normally. The 5 days I had privileges I honestly didn’t notice much difference. Some users have an automated script that crawls one’s folder whenever you download from them, so as long as one has decent amount of shares, it’s alright. (I only have shared 40 odd gigs but it’s decent enough).

The chat is useless most of the times. The users troll each other and the unmoderated nature means racism is quite common as well. That being said, there are the odd decent folks as well. I had a decent conversation with a guy once there and he even donated 5 days of Soulseek privileges to me; sadly these type of conversations are forgotten in the cesspool that is the chatroom there.

When I was listening to obscure krautrock bands which were nowhere to be found on Spotify or YT Music, Soulseek came to rescue. Also, funnily, it is easier to get flac from there than 320kbps mp3 of various albums. The former is more ubiquitous there.

I think it’s Xiaomi. Either case, that brand does put lots of useless stuff. Other Chinese OEMs do it too. Realme puts obnoxious junk even on its high end GT7 series.

I just searched for it and apparently, Moto pushed this app to some of it’s devices via a OTA update. It’s ironic because Motorola phones [atleast the midrange ones] have a relatively bloat free reputation.

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But in the vast seas of phones, Lineage OS still supports a very small subset. Major players like Google or Samsung are covered but a LOT are skipped.

If one’s phone supports Lineage OS, well and good but it’s not a fix all

I think even some Chinese OEMs throttle somewhat post 80% (and/or give user the option to limit charging upto that point only). I have a spare entry level Samsung phone. It supports 25 W charging though it gets very slow post 80%. It’s not a big deal because the battery capacity is good and with an efficient chipset and 60Hz display, it does way better than my main Realme phone which I need to charge almost twice daily.

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Haven’t Spotify mods already been clamped down in one way or the other(in terms of having a trimmed down feature set)? I used to follow Balatan’s mod from Mobilism and last I saw, Atleast some stuff was server sided.

Either case, mods can only go so far. I only used Spotify Premium once for a short while before returning back to YT Music and one of the things I liked was third party clients on desktop. ncspot is a terminal based client for Spotify that rakes in one tenth of memory requirements but sadly requires Premium and I don’t think there is any way to bypass that as of now. (though of course, most users won’t even care about such a niche client)

But if someone is serious about music, then Soulseek is the way to go. It has most genres of music, usually in flac and locally stored music is any day superior to cloud.

Today Weather is decent otherwise, has multiple sources as options and a clean, somewhat customizable UI. It also has a proper Wear OS app with complications support.

I honestly don’t know what Pocketcasts folks are working on. Their forum has lists of issues where the official Wear OS app lacks so many features, doesn’t sync properly and apparently can’t run fluidly on my Galaxy Watch 6 even [Like how much memory does it need? Gnome on Linux probably is more resource efficient than their Wear OS app].

I use Obtanium actually since my main mobile browser is Iceraven which isn’t on F-Droid by default. [It supports sideloading extensions that official Firefox doesn’t].

IIRC, Pano Scrobbler is free but has a premium version as well on Google Play. I scanned through their Github and as of August 2024, the dev was working on implementing payment features without Play integration [like donating to the app and then getting a key for it which will be validated against license servers]. I used to sideload Premium variant of Pano Scrobbler before from Mobilism.

Reminds me somewhat of the Pocketcasts app. It had a one time purchase option once but then switched to a subscription tier instead. Ironically, if Google Podcasts were alive and being developed, then no one would have any need for Pocketcasts since the former had desktop playback and Google would have developed a first party Wear OS app as well(like Pocketcasts).

However, as is evident, Google killed the app and YT Music is not at all built for podcasts. If it categories as a podcast app, then it is the single worst I have seen for podcasts.

Copyright warnings are fairly common in developed nations like much of western Europe and say, US right? Do they result in prosecutions as well( would it be worth it for an ISP to take an individual user to court and spend time and money on it?)

Copyright warnings are almost unknown in my country or much of the underdeveloped / developing world.

I am also on Nicotine. I just tried downloading and it is working fine. My port 2234 is closed as per Soulseek official site [though users can download from me, I think].

I tried yesterday and it was working. Is it not an issue with the client instead? Try Nicotine instead of the official Souseek client once.