cross-posted from: https://discuss.online/post/34255100
Thought I’d create a distinct thread from the previous one asking about daily use, because I really do want to hear more on people’s pain points. Great to know people are generally sounding pretty positive in those posts who recently switched, but want to know your difficulties as well! This way old and new users can share their thoughts, hopefully to inspire a respectful discussion.
Nvidia. I ordered a refurbished ThinkPad P1, and it showed up with a Nvidia card. There are problems waking up from sleep and sessions crashing that I don’t have with the iGPU devices which have FOSS drivers.
Electron apps. They eat RAM, but it’s the only way some apps are delivered.
MacOS can setup independent virtual desktops on each monitor, but Gnome has independent virtual desktops on only the main monitor with the others static. It can be set for all the monitors to change at the same time, but that’s not what I’m after.
LUKS is Linux only. There isn’t a cross platform way to do FDE on removable media.
Efi partitions use FAT FS. Why is this in the spec?
Only some manufacturers support LVFS. There isn’t a standardized mechanism for firmware updates, and many manufacturers don’t bother.
Gnome doesn’t have a profile export feature.
BTRFS is still a work in progress after all these years. Subvolume space quotas still aren’t recommended for use and encryption is “coming soon”. The tooling is a mess, no per subvolume mount options, no converting an existing folder to a subvolume. It mostly works, but ZFS is still nicer.
LibreOffice doesn’t have an “easy” mode similar to Google Docs and it doesn’t have a vim mode. Sometimes I just want to write, and not fiddle with every little detail.
You can try out Veracrypt for that. It is supported on Widnows, macOS and Linux and supports FDE on external drives. At least that’s what I am using at work.
I have, and it introduces a dependency, which can be a problem when software can’t be installed. I’d rather have support as part of the base OS.
This point I don’t get.
I guess you are afraid that at some point in time you are not able to download Veracrypt from a trusted Source. In this case you can keep a copy of the executable for all the platforms you need. If you are afraid that you might not be able to run it at some point in time (because dependencys are not met): this can be somehow mitigated by the Appimage version of Veracrypt bundling all its dependencies. If you think even this is not good enough: Keep a cheap reaspberry PI with Veracrypt installed arround. Just as a fallback solution to access your drives.
But if you want a cross platform solution, baked directly into Windows, MacOS and Linux … I don’t see this happening anytime soon.
The ridiculousness of hauling a RPi around everywhere I go so I can access files on a flash drive is exactly the point. LOL
Although, something like the NitroKey Storage is close to the same thing. It’s a small computer with flash storage. Packaging, I guess. LOL
Veracrypt would be one more thing to bootstrap when standing up a new computer, and I’d like to keep the amount of prep work I have to do to a new box before it’s usable to a minimum.
Endlessly tweaking systems to get it into a usable state is why I left Windows, and like to keep the complexity in my life to a minimum.
Honestly, it’s only annoying when moving between FOSS operating systems. MacOS not supporting luks, or whatever, is slightly annoying, but FreeBSD, OpenBSD, and Linux not agreeing to make me shake my head.
I think you misunderstood me, or I was not really clear. Whatever. My point was not carrying arround the RPi everywhere all the time. But (maybe) having it as a backup if (!) you are concerned to loose access to Veracrypt at some point for some reason (and you where not able to migrate to a different solution in the meantime). If that does not apply to you: very good! No problem, no solution required.
If you decided it is to bothersome/inconvenient to install an application to (maybe) solve a problem - > that’s also totally fine.
But then I am asking myself: Does there exist any solution? Maybe not under this requirements. But then again: Having a not as convenient solution as possible, or having no solution at all. But its up to you. You decide what best fits your needs.