Fedora. I've been using it since Fedora Core 1 and was mostly RedHat before that. I don't have time to muck around with my desktop and Fedora almost always just works. I've had too many problems with Ubuntu and Suse and friends. And while I like Arch and Debian and others, I just want my desktop to be point and click. My days off tinkering on my desktop are long gone. Kids, house, work, wife, grandkids, other hobbies keep me busy. I save tinkering for my selfhosting adventures.
Card/CalDAV baikal : so that I can sync my calendar and address book across phone, tablet, workstation, and laptop
Messaging prosody/synapse : private chatting with family.
File sync Nextcloud : for access to various files. This is the only one that has worked consistently for me. Syncthing et al would constantly lose connection and the file I needed wouldn't be there. Works fantastic for syncing Joplin notes.
VPN wireguard : to access things remotely and securely
Audiobooks audiobooksheld : I have a ridiculously large audio book library and enjoy listening to them when driving. This way I don't have to preload my phone.
Ebooks calibreweb : another large library. I have separate instances for different types: Magazines, regular books, RPG/gamebooks.
Version control forgejo : for coding and creative writing projects.
bookmarks shaarli : I find myself using this less and less. I use Firefox's built-in sync, so I'm thinking about switching to separating selfhosting that instead of shaarli.
Photos Synology : looking forward to immich getting stable. Once they get past regular breathing changes I'll move over to that.
I have stopped using most of the services that got me into selfhosting. Things like rss and wikis. I try new things from time to time but kill them if I don't find myself using them regularly or if the maintenance cost is more than the value add.
If you have another USB drive, I think you should be able to load the wifi drivers from that when using the netinstall. I am pretty sure I remember doing that 15 years ago.
I have the same issue. I want something simple but has encryption, native mobile apps for both Android and iOS, and threading. Facebook style posts with comments would be great.
For now we're using matrix and element bc I can find anything better. Unless something more compelling comes along we'll probably migrate to something xmpp based like snikket.
I am one of those gifted folks that enjoy astigmatism. I have tried dark mode and dark themes many times over the years and it just doesn't work for me. The screenshots are gorgeous tho!
Agreed, OpenAudible is fantastic. I've been an audible member for ages. I really only listen to my books when commuting and traveling and the pandemic set me back in my listening. Using OpenAudible allows me to keep my library available on any device and use any application to listen.
Item1: I would love something along these lines. Honestly, I wish I could configure Thunderbird to be my journal and reference my to-do items programmatically from inside journal entries.
Similar to your wish for first class dark mode, I want light mode to also be first class. Too many apps lately have made dark mode default and the light mode is unusable.
Joplin has a plug-in that can grab todos and reveal them all in one spot. You can use tags with it as well. Although I believe it only works on desktop? I haven't tried on phone/tablet. https://github.com/CalebJohn/joplin-inline-todo#readme
Past: My notes are all over the place. Some are in paper notebooks, on scraps of paper, index cards. Some are plain text files, some are markdown; dumped into random folders (had some in my yyyy/mm/dd folders for my journaling, some in project folders) some are on a wiki, some in redmine, some in openproject. I've tried different bug tracking apps, but as mentioned, they (like project management apps) are too burdensome.
Current: For now I am using Joplin for my active notes (and slowly migrating historical notes as I have energy). I have a top level notebook for my homelab, then a subnotebook broken down by subject (infrastructure, app/service, hardware), then individual pages for each specific item (host os setup, vpn, application, etc). On those individual pages, I have it sectioned out; Goal, Research notes, Actions taken, results.
Personal Notes
Journal
Inbox
Homelab
Infrastructure
Host OS
VPN
NFS
Services
Radicale
Audiobookshelf
etc
Hardware
node 1
node 2
node 3
router
Future step: Once I have something figured out and ready for "prod", I will be wiping it out and redoing it all through ansible. I'll take that playbook and a clean markdown doc with the important details and put them in git. That way I can rebuild it later if there is a tragedy.
Not all TerraMaster units. I happen to have one that can't replace the OS.