I know it’s been three weeks, but thanks for telling me about this! I might actually do this, for the projects here and there which aren’t packaged into nixpkgs (yet).

Thanks for the suggestion, I must say though, I am very happily de-googled :D

Thanks for the recommendation! Looks like a great option. Actually, the p2p aspect prompted me to have another look at the Jitsi docs, and lo and behold, there’s an option for that, as long as no more than 2 people participate in a chat… (The reason I’d prefer Jitsi is actually just that NixOS comes with options for jitsi out of the box, for Miro I would have to introduce containers into my setup :D)

Yeah, I think it’s overkill, plus needing an account will likely lead to issues (login difficulties, forgotten password,…) compared to “just click this link”. But thanks for the recommendation anyways, I did not know NC comes with video chat!

Thanks for the experience report! Would you say that you’re happy with the video and audio quality and latency?

Yeah, I am havong mixed feelings about this. But at least during Covid, it was apparently the norm, so it must work, somehow…

I could find a teacher closer to me, but for one thing, I only have a boke available, and biking ~10km with the cello on my back is not something I look forward to doing on a regular basis. The other thing is that I consider this teacher a friend, she’s given me lessonsfor more than a decade in the past, and I know we vibe well together.

Yeah, those are all fair points. We’ve been using Jitsi for work with pretty much no problems, albeit in group calls where video and audio quality don’t matter too much. Someone below gave some good recommendations for hardware as well.

The helpdesk issue… IDK. If Jitsi works, it is incredibly easy to use, right? Basically just, click this link and you’re in. (If does some heavy lifting there, I know :D)

THank you for the suggestion! It looks like a great option for playing together. I must say though, what would probably kill it for me/my teacher is the complexity of the setup. Separate video, and from the docs, it seems like a bit of an involved setup to get good results?

Besides, we will probably not be playing together at all 😅

Oh wow, someone with the exact same usecase!! :D

Thank you for the hardware recommendations. Tbh that is not something I have put any thought into yet.

Can I ask you, is the UMC204HD necessary only because you have to mics, or would you recommend something like it regardless?

I have been thinking of just using a pair of headphones with built-in mic for talking/hearing my teacher, but yeah, it seems like at least something additional for the cello would be beneficial. Do you have any experiences with pick-up mics for the cello? I saw that there are some comparatively well-priced options around

It’s definitely the fallback option if DIY doesn’t pan out. The no-filtering can definitely also be enabled in the Jitsi config, so at least in that regards I’m not too worried.

Throughout the pandemic I’ve largely been able to avoid both Teams and Zoom, but Zoom did cause a number of problems on Linux, so I’m not too hyped to give it another try :/

Ouh, that sucks to hear :( I think I’ll still at least give it a try (it has been on my bucket list to set up for a while, not specifically for music purposes, just in general).

THanks, that’s the second recommendation for Jamulus - I assume it’s really that noticeable of a difference? In terms of latency and quality?

I thought about adding a link, but am a bit hesitant to de-anonymize myself on here 😅

But it’s basically this:

• Proxmox is not Nix configured. There’s a project for that, but IMO t’ll take a couple of years to be ready for production.
• I’ve created a custom nix module that essentially just sets my default values for stuff like bios type, boot order,… And allows to set CPU cores, RAM, IP,…
• all this does though is just setting the corresponding values from the nixos-generators proxmox output
• additionally, all the usual stuff is handled (user, known ssh keys, base config of the system)
• for each VM, I only have a single file containing the VM settings (ID, RAM, cpu, ip,…) and the service config for whatever the VM is for
• then lastly I have a custom script/shell that essentially just allows to do “nixvm-new <flake output name>” which generates the image, moves it to the nas, and calls on proxmox to import the image, plus some cleanup

TBH this sounds way more complicated than it is / feels to use 😄

(Preface: almost all of this is handled in a single Nix config, and no docker in use at all)

At home, in a two-hosts Proxmox cluster:

• blocky for adblocking
• a full *arr stack with torrents and nzbs for uuuuuuhhh Linux ISOs
• Jellyfin so friends and family can watch, I mean use the Linux ISOs
• Paperless (HIGHLY recommend)
• Wastebin (Pastebin alternative)
• Sterling-PDF (also really recommend, allowed me to get rid of Acrobat Reader for filling out and signing PDFs, plus a bunch more)
• Homeassistant
• Linux and Windows clients available for whenever you might need them (not often, but can come in handy)
• Borg client, backing up parts of my NAS to a cloud storage box
• OPNSense backup for the hardware firewall
• Forgejo

On a bare metal machine at a reputable cloud provider:

• my personal Email, Calendar, Contacts (super easy with Nix)
• another blocky instance
• another borg client
• Rustdesk server (OSS Teamviewer)
• wireguard that’s just used by my TV so crunchyroll thinks it’s in (other country), Lmao

Wishlist:

• Vaultwarden
• Immich, once added to nixpkgs
• PeerTube
• Pixelfed

I was fully on board until, like, a year ago. But the more I used it, the more obviously it came undone.

I initially felt like it could really help with programming. And it looked like it, too - when you fed it toy problems where you don’t really care about how the solution looks, as long as it’s somewhat OK. But once you start giving it constraints that stem from a real project, it just stops being useful. It ignores constraints (use this library, do not make additional queries, …), and when you point out its mistake and ask it to to better it goes “oh, sorry! Here, let me do the same thing again, with the same error!”.

If you’re working in a less common language, it even dreams up non-existing syntax.

Even the one thing it should be good at - plain old language - it sucks ass at. It’s become so easy to spot LLM garbage, just due to its style.

Worse, asking it to proofread a text for spelling and grammar mistakes, but to explicitly do not change the wording or style, there’s about a 50/50 chance it will either

• change your wording or style, or
• point out errors that are not even in the original text in the first place!

I could honestly go on and on, but what it boils down to is: it is able to string together words that make it sound like it knows what it is doing, but it is just that, a facade. And it looks like for more and more people, the spell is finally breaking.

Yeah. I’ve had zero problems hosting my mail on a bare metalachine in a datacenter. They arrive just like they should, plus it’s just so freeing to host it yourself.

Ah, good news in regards to gaming, esp. Steam gaming!

Steam invested quite a bit of energy into “Proton”, essentially a new kind of compatibility layer. If you remember tinkering around with wine and winetricks from years ago, that’s basically gone nowadays.

For most games, just go into the Steam settings for that game, and under “Compatibility”, check the box.

Then click download, and play. That’s it for most games 🎉

Also check out protondb.com - it’s basically a community-sourced database cataloging how well Steam games work on Linux.

Good luck on your Linux journey, and feel free to ask questions if something comes up! :)

I have always been pro-privacy, but in a kind of lukewarm, “I wish someone would do something about this” way.

What has finally pushed me to ditch services from large corporations over the past couple of years is not really a concern for privacy, its a drive for self-sufficiency.

As basically the last stepping stone, as of a couple of weeks ago, my email, calendar and contacts are self-hosted, and it’s just… So freeing.

Start with Linux Mint. It should be a very pleasant and straightforward experience right out of the box, and is just in general very beginner friendly. I recommend to create a live USB (basically, download the ISO from the Mint website, then use something like Balena Etcher to put it on a USB stick). You can then boot off that stick, and try Mint out to your heart’s content, without risking your Windows install or data at all.

Can I ask, what are the programs you wager you’ll have to emulate through wine?

👀 (to both of those statements)