You want to run it on the phone itself? I don’t think any phone would be good enough for that. The issue with AI assistants is not just privacy. It’s also the resource consumption (and of course stolen content). It’s so high and only these big companies with huge server farms can do it.

If you just want a voice assistant for simple commands, I’ve heard of an open source local assistant called Dicio. But I don’t think you can talk to it like ChatGPT or something.

Similar thoughts and after hopping a bit I’m liking Solus really well. It’s rolling release but what they call “curated” rolling release. They take a little bit of time to iron stuff out. There’s a weekly update cycle.

The installation is through live ISO and was pretty easy, took only a few minutes. They have a Plasma ISO too, since you mentioned wanting KDE.

As a plus, I’ve not once used the command prompt in the past couple of months since I installed (GNOME first and then since the last week, KDE). I’m not averse to commands but I do want something that I can recommend to my less techy anti-capitalist friends. My games have all been working fine too.

Edit to add: I think they’ve also mentioned that their aim is for a personal desktop.

Some stuff that works great with Lutris or Heroic on Fedora, just wouldn’t even start up on Debian. I tried a couple of things but nothing worked. I thought it might be a new parts issue stable is 2 years old at this point.

I’m going to see if I can first try kernel+mesa backports (after trying the games again just on stable). If that doesn’t work I might give testing a go.

I want to know what kind of setup would avoid issues with games. I know I can run Debian with KDE from the installer. I had issues with games on plain stable so I wanted to know what can be done

I will try that, thank you. Are those just two packages I need to get from backports or are there dependencies and stuff that will come up?

Thank you! That’s pretty reassuring.

Thank you so much for the detailed response! I might be able to stretch out to 4GB RAM on the Pi

I’ve been finding it a bit difficult to understand the hardware part of things. For example, the hubzilla FAQ you shared says 512M and not MB. Does that not refer to RAM?

And I’ve also not been able to find any guides about the “levels” in hardware. If not the Pi, then what? How do I decide? How do I explore?

Thank you. That does sound annoying but .com is both boring and more expensive.

Ohh, I maybe should clarify. I don’t intend to use my own server. I have a provider - disroot.

Thank you! Also, if I want different domains for different Hubzilla accounts within the same server, would that be possible? Like the server itself is a.hub, but an account in the hub wants to use b. space as it’s domain, like username@b.space, would I be able to allow that?

Yeah I am not going to host my own email. I have a provider who I’m going to ask to attach the custom domain. Only the WordPress/Hubzilla instance I might host on my own.

Great! As a follow up question, for example I want to let a friend use my hubzilla server to host their hub. Can I “allow” them to bring their own domain name and let them use it?

Edit to add one more question: Is there a restriction on what top level domain can be used for what purpose (fedi, email, website) or anything goes?

Sort of. I feel like I need to know my own priorities better because I’m not sure what I want wrt hosting. Because of general trust and privacy issues, of course self-hosting (at home) is the ultimate best option, but I think that might only be a long term thing and I can’t do it now. So I’m wondering what to prioritize right now - cost, reputation, or simplicity - because I’ve found quite a few options that differ in these aspects.

Writefreely is simple and can be free, but I can’t find very many public instances and have no way of verifying reputation.

Similarly, wordpress.com has been under fire for a lot of things and I’m not sure how I feel about hosting with them &- free or otherwise.

Everything else like random VPS providers feels like a gamble because I know nothing about them and it seems like a black box. And obviously, cost increases for what is essentially going to be a bunch of writings from one person.

WriteFreely looks pretty good!

Would you recommend WordPress as a hosting service? I’m not able to understand the structure of it all to figure out if it:'s ethical and what with the recent fights with WP Engine and stuff, I’m unsure how it all actually works.

They are not mutually exclusive. Privacy is one of the most political issues out there because every fascist/billionare wants control and control requires surveillance. I have not completely given up on Proton because of one man’s statements, but it’s not looking good.

Those statements from the CEO suggest one of two things - naiveté (to think either US party cares about the “little guy” or about privacy and freedom) or cowardice (just sucking up to Trump like every other CEO right now). Neither of which is good for privacy or freedom because to achieve either, you need both awareness and a spine to stand up against this shit.

And the fact that no one else from the company or their board or foundation has bothered to jump in and take action means either they’re on board with his statements or too powerless, which again, doesn’t spell good things.