I’ve seen more compelling writing on the back of a gum wrapper.

Absolutely pathetic, BBC.

Classic enshitification arc. They were a fast growing startup that engineered really good printers and software. People, especially newbies flocked to them because their software was easy to use and their initial print quality was very good without any tweaking or tuning.

But they were backed by private equity, and had to start showing higher and higher returns, they started locking in users with their proprietary cloud services.

They’ve been locking users in more and more recently, and just a few weeks ago, threatened a user with legal action for posting AGPL code up on their own repo. The code enabled users to use their Bambu printers without needing to sign into Bambu’s cloud.

Now there is a big community backlash and Bambu is having to do PR damage control.

My Jellyfin server goes, “Burrrrrrr!”

I’ve thought for a long time that if a FOSS project wants to use Discord as its primary community center, they should build it on Matrix and have a bridge to Discord as a secondary.

That way, they get the larger reach and visibility of Discord for more of the normie crowd, without compromising their core FOSS user base and forcing them into proprietary solutions.

Gaming PC - Nobara (Fedora base with lots of gaming-specifc kernel optimizations baked in.)

Personal laptop - Linux Mint

Business laptop - Linux Mint Debian Edition

Junk/Test laptops - Void

Home lab main hypervisor - XCP-ng (Highly customized Fedora under the hood.)

NAS - TrueNAS (Debian under the hood.)

Virtual servers - Mostly Debian, but a few Alma Linux VMs to get that RHEL experience. Ubuntu Server for my self-hosted gaming servers.

Steam Deck - SteamOS (Valve’s immutable spin of Arch.)

That’s a big one too, should catch lots of malware in that!

Call them in, parking patrol will be giddy writing all those tickets in a row.

The Mullvad integration allows you to use Mullvad as your VPN for internet browsing while still being on your tailnet.

So normally, running two different VPN services can cause a bunch of problems, if it even works at all. Tailscale’s Mullvad integration fixes that.

Tailscale by itself is an overlay network. It’s literally a second network that your computer is connected to, but instead of it being a physical network with wires, switches, and routers, it’s a virtual network, a network that runs as software.

So imagine your computer right now at home. You plug into your router, and you have a local IP address, something like 192.168.1.20 right? If you run ipconfig on Windows or ip a on Linux, you’ll see your network adaptors listed with what their current IP address is. So if you’re running Windows, you’ll see your physical network adaptor listed with the IP address of 192.168.1.20

When you install Tailscale on that computer and log into your account, then run that command again, you’ll see a new network device listed, and it will have a totally different IP address, like 100.89.113.14

That is your Tailnet IP address, it works just like your “normal” IP address, but instead of it being a physical Ethernet adaptor on your motherboard and plugged into your home router, it is a virtual adaptor (software) running on your computer, connected to the Tailscale network, which has servers all around the world.

When you install Tailscale on a new device, say an old computer that you are using as a Minecraft server. That computer will get a new IP address on your tailnet, say 100.94.65.132

Because both of those machines were added by you to your own Tailnet, they can see and talk to each other by default. Meaning you could run a ping command from your home computer to your Minecraft server’s Tailscale IP, and it will respond.

Because this runs on the internet through Tailscale’s servers, you can do this from anywhere. That’s the “VPN” type functionality you are talking about. No matter where your home computer is, you can still access your Minecraft server because it is on your Tailnet, just as if it were still plugged into your router right next to you.

This is how I access my entire home lab from anywhere in the world. For example, I have a Jellyfin media server (like Plex) that I have a bunch of movies, TV shows, anime on. It’s running Tailscale and is on my Tailnet. I have Tailscale installed on my Android smartphone too.

So if I am staying at a hotel in another state, or visiting my family on the other side of the country, and I want to watch a movie or show that I have on my server all the way back home. I just run the Tailscale app on my phone, then open the Jellyfin app and I see all my home media right there on my phone and can watch it flawlessly. Even though I am at my parent’s house, on a totally different internet connection, 500 miles away from my home.

No, Tailscale is an overlay network. In it’s simplest form, it can act as a VPN. But it does much more than that.

Tailscale installs a virtual network device and allocates IP addresses to any device you install it on and sign in with your tailnet. Think of it as a virtual meshed LAN that runs on top of your physical network.

Tailscale becomes your control plane and provides advanced access control options for all your users and devices.

I use Tailscale and share out that server machine’s tailscale IP with just my gaming buddies.

But if you wanna live dangerously, you can port forward from your router to your internal mumble server.

I’ve got a Mumble server running on a little Linux container in my home lab.

Easy to set up and configure, very stable. Nothing special, it does what it is supposed to do, be a low latency, stable voip system, and it does great.

Waterfox on Mobile has been working well for me so far.

Door dashers and Uber eats are the worst in my experience.

Total disregard for any traffic rules, they just straight up park their cars in the middle of a lane outside of the restaurant and leave their cars sitting there while they go inside.

Food delivery gig services are an absolute blight and should be completely illegal imo.

Call it in. I got a truck just like this towed within an hour and a half for illegally parking, partially blocking an alley street.

Expensive and very inconvenient for the owner, which is just what we want 😌

Start with Linux Mint. It’s similar in vibe to older Windows, (think Windows 7/10)

You can use the GUI for everything, even major version upgrades, driver installations, and Kernel changes.

It comes with everything you need to get started, and their software portal is easy to use and get stuff from, including gaming staples like Steam, OBS Studio, etc.

Call it in. All cities have a number you can call to report illegal parking. I had a guy park his stupid huge pickup truck and trailer in the alleyway by my house, blocked me into my own driveway. Totally illegal to park there.

I called the parking violation report hotline I found online for my city. Within about 30 minutes a cop showed up, got out and looked at the truck, made a call on his radio, and 20 minutes later a tow truck got there and towed the whole thing away.

Didn’t cost me a dime, and the loser who parked it there not only had an absolutely shit day when he found out his truck and trailer got towed, but also had to pay out the nose to get it back from the impound lot. Win win!

Thanks for the response. I’m doing great now. Got a new job as a sysadmin making about 35% more than my old job, and I get to work on Linux a bunch, and my team is really solid.

Still sucks that I lost all that work, but I was able to get some of the old hardware back for free, so my old servers can live again in my home lab.

Lol this is somebody’s hackerman fantasy post, the chain smoking, the terminology, I can practically hear the early 2000’s drum n’ bass/nightcore in the background.

Sorry, typo, I fixed it now. Pseudo-VM is what I meant.