How would it otherwise? Network based location?

Yes. Your phone could triangulate its location from nearby celltowers ane wifi networks. Google has a database of wifi routers (actually that was the point of google streetview, they collected wifi bssids alongside taking photos, they also collect this data from android devices).

With microg you can select from different dbs for this, they are called ‘UnifiedNlp backends’: apple has a similar db from iphones, mozilla used to collect this data with a separate app for MLS (they shut down the project in 2024 march). Microg builds an on device private db as well, it will remembers the wifi networks and celltowers you were close to, and next time you are there it won’t need gps, saves a ton of battery life. This was called Deja Vu, I love this name. Search for UnifiedNlp on fdroid you can find some more options.

Since MicroG 0.3 you don’t have to install these separately, Mozilla and Deja Vu are builtin, and they are more than enough

Huh? Which rom asks this? Usually you have to go through hoops to get microg, and only a handful of roms have it builtin. It can only ask if you want to enable microg not installing it or not, microg to correctly work it should be installed in /system/priv-app, to do that after boot on device, you have to be root.

Do you use any app from aurora or outside fdroid? If your answer is no, than you can use android without a GMS package.

Also as I wrote, location won’t work for you underground or inside concrete buildings. If you are fine with these kind of limitations than you can obviously.

Marwin (the main developer of microg) said in some interview that he doesn’t want microg to exist, and in a perfect world we shouldn’t need such workaround. I would be also happy if android wouldn’t depend this muhc on google

(I reread ops question and I can only see the term open source 2 times, but whatever, I understand what you say, and I don’t want to debate about semantics.)

The point with microG is it’s still the best way if you want to use android. The other options are:

• Play services (GMS), or Huawei has some similar solution because of US trade embragoes.
• You can use android without play services but notifications won’t work for most apps, even if you can open them. (UnifiedPush tries to solve notification part) Wifi and cell based location won’t work
• I see microG as an acceptable middle ground. I still have to give up something to goog, but it’s not much compared to GMS, and I can use all available apps

OP asked about Open Source not about privacy.

MicroG minimises connections to google servers, here you can read what addresses it still connects to and why: https://github.com/microg/GmsCore/wiki/Google-Network-Connections

MicroG works really well

A free-as-in-freedom re-implementation of Google’s proprietary Android user space apps and libraries.

That video is till up: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vj04MKykmnQ

She went there, because in the support forum the manufacturer replied that they can only give the source code in person.

Actually that’s acceptable, and does not violate GPL, they just expected that noone will show up in their sweatshop. GPL does not define how you should make the source available.

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It’s true what you write, but it’s not related to Wayland/X11.

But this is the reason CAD software can’t use multiple cpu cores for geometry calculations. The next calculation needs the result of the previous one, it can’t be parallelized.

I use it frequently, and it’s mostly right. It can tell traffic jams really precisely (it says something like “you will have to stop in 300m” and the traffic jam is actually starts at ∓10m from that point)

But it tries to navigate me through fully closed roads. I don’t know why is that. The kind of closed road it misses is regularly closed, but at irregular intervals (like most weekends on the summer, but not always, if there is some happening it is also closed on weekdays, etc). These kind of irregular things shouldn’t be mapped in OpenStreetMap (As documented in the wiki) I have a feeling that they think that it should be mapped, but I won’t map it.

I guess it also depends on where you live, so just try it first.

They collect location of their users but anonimize every data on device, they can’t track anyone personally. They also sell their SDK to businesses and collect data from there as well.

So what? Every laptop has a gpu do you call them gpu laptops? Modern CPUs/SOCs accelerate a lot of things, this is just one more.

Nvidia called the ray tracing gpus RTX. Now all of them has that chip, all of them are called RTX. Same will happen here, in 5 years every cpu will be “AI” and no one will call it that way

I’m not familiar with linux mint, why?

Also they can switch to debian base relatively easily

I just read the article and they say exactly what I guessed:

“This approach would guarantee stability on the appointed release day, but was proving unpopular with consumers looking to adopt the latest features and hardware support as well as silicon vendors looking […] to align their Ubuntu support,” Canonical’s Brett Grandbois explains.

But to “provide users with the absolute latest in features and hardware support, Ubuntu will now ship the absolute latest available version of the upstream Linux kernel at the specified Ubuntu release freeze date, even if upstream is still in Release Candidate (RC) status.”

Maybe stability is not a frequent issue nowadays, and they need the new kernel to support new hardware more quickly?

E.g. I can imagine a new linux friendly laptop can’t be sold with ubuntu preinstalled because the old kernel is not supporting some parts yet, but it’s already merged upstream. Or something like that.

I thought for a second it’s [email protected]

My bank’s 2FA works only via their app or via SMS. For SMS I would have to pay per each received SMS.

The app perfectly works without safetynet, with microG, rooted with magisk but hidden by zygisk, so I’m lucky. At one update they added a popup at start after login about asking to add my card to Google Wallet (or whatever it’s called nowadays), and it’s not implemented in MicroG, so I can’t open it since that version. I just downgraded to the last working version and blacklisted its upgrades in Aurora, and I hope they won’t block my old version in the near future.

It’s a very progressive small local bank, I will contact them about this issue if they block my old version to make that dialog optional.

How do you make old people happy by messaging on signal? What makes a text based messenger “fun”?

I enjoy speaking with my friends on signal, because - you know - they are my friends.

My use case with stickers: when they were a new things, I saved like 3 packs, and I never felt the need to look for a new one.

About links: there are far better tools and services to store your bookmarks than a text messenger. Personally I use self hosted wallabag, but there are a lot others, and all web browsers has some bookmark feature, I don’t know why you want to store them in Signal.

The stickers are not in the app for privacy reason. This website is not run by the foundation, but by the community. Read more about how stickers work in the blog post: https://signal.org/blog/make-privacy-stick/

I think you have a preconception about what you want, maybe it’s discord, or I don’t know which service you think about as “ideal UX” or “for young people”. But if you start to think about that all that bells and whistles are actually just distractions. The only important thing in the long run will be communication, and Signal is good with that.

Why should a text messenger be fun? It’s a communication tool, not a game…

The stickers accessed via the sticker button left of the textbox. You can add stickers by going to https://signalstickers.org and click on add stickers. And you can add them some way if you receive a new one from a contact.

What is a list of links? Links you have sent/recieved previously?

Search for “vfio single gpu”, It’s possible, but it has drawbacks. Iirc you have to run everything as root or something like that.

Another recommended way is to run a headless linux as host, and passthrough the gpu to a linux guest next to a windows guest, than you just switch between the guests

Yes that is another option. I know 7zip works there, win11 is mostly the same as win7 under the hood, but I would install a supported frontend instead of fiddling with the registry, tweaks like that can break after updates

I don’t use windows personally, just set it up for others. I don’t care enough to tweak the registry for them, if there are more convenient solutions