I did this for several months. If you check out the Alpine community you’ll see that many people do this. So, it is not a dumb idea. Alpine is a “generalist” distro and comes packed with all the DEs and WMs you want. They also accept package requests and are usually pretty fast about it.

I would recommend using the Edge branch just to have access to the newest packages, but keep an eye on the issue tracker before hitting update. Also, get on their Matrix and other accounts to follow different discussions.

Many have surprised me for different reasons.

The most recent that did is Alpine. I decided for some reason to install it for regular desktop use on an RPI400.

First surprise, the ISO was so small. Second surprise, everything installed so fast when I used the install scripts. Third surprise was the up-to-date repos. The final surprise was the community: it handled noob questions and complicated questions so well, walked users through click by click and one command at a time. Awesome and totally an acceptable option for a desktop which is why I immediately installed it on my main laptop and used it for a number of months.

(just gonna be annoying and note that the 404 Media article isn’t a true “paywall”, they addressed this on their blog: https://www.404media.co/why-404-media-needs-your-email-address/. If you create an account you don’t need to pay and they email the published articles in full every day.)

Try on a shared image. One should open in the app, the other in the browser.

Perhaps there will be an internal Webview implementation one day.

I just use whatever text editor I have and make MD files synced with Syncthing. On mobile I use Markor.

I’ve tried several different methods, and as much as I try to be organised, I feel pretty good with my folder of files.

That might help? This is a piracy place but things that use Widevine and constantly changing. That file on your phone will only play on your phone because that app has the decryption keys. The easy apps that do this are not free apps. Screencasting and recording is something you could just start doing now.

You could also tell us the name of the video and someone here might be able to find it.

I like the idea of just recording it, because it is simple.

But, if you are beholden to doing it another way, can you tell us how you ripped the content? Did you use yt-dlp?

Whatever the case, you need separate audio and video streams. They’ll probably both be encrypted.

You’ll need something like mp4decryptor (https://github.com/axiomatic-systems/Bento4) and and widevine keyguesser thing. I haven’t done this in about 5 years, so forgive me.

There is a specific order of operations that I don’t exactly remember but you’ll need to find up-to-date instructions.

I use super boring Claws Mail for my personal email. I handle my contacts with Khard and calendars with Khal.

I don’t use a Yubikey though.

I’ve been using Linux for a long time. When I install my fist step is to uninstall. I get not wanting things taking up space.

You should be able to remove things like LibreOffice and so on without any issues.

In the past, dependency chains screwed things up depending on the distro. (Remove Chrome? Oh, well, we’ll remove your DE too! I remember once uninstalling VLC, which I never use, wanted to uninstall the browser and other media apps…)

I did go and look around, and you are right. Lots of posts, older and more recent, telling people not to uninstall and change to a minimal distro.

cmus is great for music

mpv for videos, there are different extensions to automatically open YT videos with it.

beets for sorting music

nicotine plus for looking for music

syncthing

zathura

improving performance isn’t easy if you feel like things are running smoothly, but there are a few laptop specific things like tlp that you could look into although I suspect that distro uses them out of the box

Outside of Gnome I think you may need to install an additional package like evolution-on

Already mentioned, but Strawberry is worth checking out. If Quod Libet works, stick with that. I liked it when I used it.

mpd has a number of frontends.

No longer developed I think, but I’ll mention gmusicbrowser as it used to be my go-to.

cmus is what I use now.

I also have a very large library and use Debian 12.5 so I’ll bookmark this thread for later.

Sometimes yt-dlp drops fragments leading to corrupt files, maybe that’s what’s going on.

I went through something similar with my Brother printer, but stuck with USB. I’ll have to give your tips a try later.

I haven’t been able to get 2-sided to work except with LibreOffice for some reason, but maybe that DuplexNoTumble thing is the key…or value.

Debian

I’ve tried different distros and liked them, but tend to come back to Debian.

My scepticism is through the roof reading this. First, I find it hard to believe that he has two working units unless they are programmed to sit in front of a terminal and tap Y…

The rest speaks for itself: Musk likes to BS.

If you are geoblocked you can stream it with https://ga.pbs-video.pbs.org/videos/nova/de12ed2c-17e6-4434-a430-7f80c26a6002/2000426341/hd-16x9-mezzanine-1080p/nova5107-AABR-AVC_793.m3u8 with mpv

See also: this thread on Mastodon https://octodon.social/@cwebber/112451933593063510

Ok. Makes sense. The video is geoblocked for me so I probably should’ve kept my mouth shut

Maybe just bad research. I haven’t tried, but I’m sure if you search for “how to protect yourself online” some of the SEO manipulating websites show up in the first results.

Also, for Plank at least, I have a feeling that development has stopped so waiting won’t help. You’ll need to find an alternative.