This is old news and long-since resolved by RPM Fusion and/or flatpaks.
Classic theme ftw, and arguably the best version of the classic theme too.
If your hobby is technology and you enjoy spending time learning this stuff, then go for it. You'll probably have a good time, and you likely won't stop at Void.
If this is more of a grass is greener over there thing, then consider that constantly switching your software environment is just time taken from something else, and it's time you'll never get back. Ever. The pursuit of minimalism can often bring the opposite of its desire effect.
Ptyxis, formerly Prompt. I used urxvt for many years but eventually settled on GNOME Terminal after transitioning to the GNOME environment for most of my devices. Ptyxis is a slick and quick container-centric GTK 4 terminal that fits well with my Fedora Silverblue container-based workflow.
Relevant topics also missing from the survey:
- Choice of desktop operating system
- Choice of mobile platform and OS
- Use of email encryption
- Use of cloud storage
- Use and method of disk encryption
The best and most official explanation I've read is the 2017 GNOME blog post, Status Icons and GNOME.
Essentially, tray icons are a throwback to the days before designated notification and media playback APIs, and they now create some ambiguity for app developers, in addition to being ripe for abuse.
It's a worthwhile read and the writer makes several valid points, but doesn't address as much as I'd like in terms of actual solutions for things like instant messengers.
Personally, I would be happy if most traditional tray apps could be displayed in the dash, with status indicators, and started in a minimized state, but I still see the benefit of having some always-visible panel icons, such as instant messengers and VPN indicators.
As long as you don't need audiobooks on it, you can essentially erase your wifi credentials, turn off wifi, and manage your ebooks through USB and something like Calibre.
The Kindle OS will continue to collect and store all sorts of telemetry, and will upload it later if you ever reconnect the device to the internet. Just something to consider.
Normally, I would just suggest avoiding Kindles but, like me, you already have the device so might as well use it.
Looking so forward to seeing K-9 Mail incorporate even more modern features (snooze!) and take on the new branding. It has already come a long way these past couple of years, and made my degoogling journey much easier. Would love to see an Android-based calendaring equivalent too. Shout out to cketti for all his hard work!
Still waiting for my refund for what I suspect was a switcharoo return of a PC. Ordered a renewed Optiplex 7040 with an i7-6700 for a family member, but received someone's old and dusty 3020 with an i3-4150 instead, and the refurb sticker for the right product had been slapped on it.
Figured it was a one-off scam, reordered another one right away, and thankfully the second was legit...but they've had the returned PC for 2 weeks now and still no refund. And course no way to follow up about it within the return status itself, so I'll be wasting even more time trying to chase it down. Something has to change.
I'm glad to see you've gotten a ton of feedback here, and I just wanted to add another comment in support of flatpaks and image-based computing. I've been using Linux extensively for about 15 years now, mostly Arch and Debian Sid. I've been a distro packager, and I've compiled plenty of my own apps over the years.
This past year I took Fedora Silverblue for a spin after following the project for quite some time, and I am convinced that the image-based system approach, coupled with containerized and sandboxed userspace applications, is the future of Linux for most users. It makes so much sense from nearly all perspectives; whether security, reliability, or flexibility.
Integral parts of the system are mounted read-only by default. Simple commands can rollback unwanted changes, upgrade to a new distro release, or even sideload an entirely different OS. System updates are automated, as are flatpak updates, and there is little-to-no risk to stability due to the very nature of the essentials-only system images. And if something catastrophic did happen, you're just a reboot away from rolling it back.
Consider for a moment the collective energy and time that distro package maintainers must undertake on a weekly basis. Much of it simply repeated by each distro, building the same applications over and over again. Flatpaks are built once and deployed everywhere. Think of the collective potential that could be directed elsewhere.
Couple this with containers and the choice of distro matters even less. Arch, Debian, Ubuntu and Fedora are just a keystroke away. Yes, you can run containers on any distro of course, but you don't gain any of the other ostree benefits mentioned above.
I have since moved all of my workstations to Silverblue and I don't see myself ever going back to a traditional system again. If anything, I may start automating my own image deployments, similar to Universal Blue.
Yes, flatpak as a platform still needs some work, and so does ostree, but both are evolving quickly and will only get better with time.
To others who complain about needing Flatseal...in my opinion, this is a feature to be embraced, not loathed. Sane defaults are rarely sane for everyone, and Flatseal exists to give you complete control over what an app can or cannot see and do.
It's been a long time in the making, but I've finally degoogled and largely removed all proprietary software from my personal life. I know this topic is pretty well covered here and elsewhere so just to add to the list of others, here's where I'm at these days:
- OS: Fedora Linux (w/ AMD Radeon GPU)
- Email: Thunderbird w/ hosted email over IMAP
- Calendar/Contacts: Radicale instance w/ DAVx⁵ on Android
- Storage: Syncthing
- Web: Firefox
- IM: Signal
- Desktop productivity: LibreOffice when I need it (Collabora Office on Android)
- Notes: Vim, VS Code (Markor on Android); most of my "docs" are just plain text files written in markdown
- Passwords: KeepassXC/DX
- Code editor: Vim, VS Code
- GrapheneOS on mobile, with almost entirely FOSS apps
- Kindle e-book reader with management via Calibre
- Media managed by Kodi with a raspberry pi
- Proxmox hypervisor for Windows/Linux VMs and containers
Gaming under Linux has improved unbelievably these past few years, now that Steam is contributing with their Steam Deck platform. I used to have to dual-boot Windows to keep up with the latest titles, but I wiped it about a year ago and things have been great.
I still rely on Microsoft Excel and Adobe Photoshop for some tasks, but less so now than ever before. Unfortunately, my work will always be a Windows-dominated environment.
The beauty of Fedora Atomic is that anyone effected by the recent update (including me) could simply rollback to the previous image and boot as normal in order to troubleshoot. This is exactly why nearly all of my devices are running Silverblue or Kinoite now.
I think it's worth mentioning that significant bugs happen across all major OS platforms.
Recently, Microsoft pushed a patch requiring effected users to manually resize their EFI recovery partition. Shortly after that, it was announced that all Apple Silicon Macs suffered from an unpatchable vulnerability which can defeat encryption. These are just a couple of examples from recent memory...there are many others.
To truly avoid serious software vulnerabilities or bugs is to avoid software entirely. Operating systems are highly complex, multilayered software, and shit happens.