The reality is what youre asking for is very complex - you’re asking for lagless streaming for a desktop. That is running a GUI on remote hardware, and then streaming that video to another computer with low latency so you have no perception of lag in moving the mouseor interaction, and continuous streaming of desktop updates.

There are lots of factors at play that can make it a poor experience.

You can have what you want if:

• The server you SSH in to has the resources to run X well
• The server you SSH in to has the hardware to be able to then convert that to video (with some tricks) and stream it
• The internet connection between you and the remote server is stable and high enough bandwidth to stream the desktop
• the internet connection between you and the remote desktop is low latency.

Its very hard to achieve all those things even when youre creating machines that are dedicated for remote desktop streaming. I have done that in my work with Windows devices and to get good quality streaming we needed dedicated hardware, dedicated software and high quality internet. And even then some of our users had bad experiences.

Most remote servers are definitely not set up to provide what you want. Dedicated software for the task will help as there are lits of tricks that they apply to make a streaming desktop appear latency free versus simpler solutions that just stream the actual desktop.

VNC is not a good solution - its basically just taking screenshots and streaming those to you. It works with fast devices on a local network, but is very limited in your use.

If you really want to solve this look at software optimised for low latency uses such as gaming. For example Moonlight/Sunshine are for game streaming but work with desktops. They are designed to be low latency high quality. But to achieve that you need the video hardware on your server, and the good low latency stable internet connection.

Real world high quality desktop streaming also needs good graphics hardware and optimised tools. It can be achieved with open source software but you need the hardware to to do the heavy lifting.

How is it misleading? Plex Pass is a subscription? It would be confusing to many people if it said “Plex pass” instead of “Subscription” as not everyone would necessarily even know what that is. Subscription is very clear.

I use Jellyfin as a home media server - in my set up I have it running on my desktop PC, and I use it to stream a media library to my tv.

A home media server basically just means its meant to be deployed at a small scale rather than as a platform for 1000s of people to use.

Your scenario is exactly what Jellyfin and Plex can do. If you have 5 users then you just need a host device running the server that is powerful enough to run 5 video streams at the same time. The server can transcode (where the server takes on the heavy lifting needing a more powerful CPU) or direct play (where all the server does is send the bits of the file and the end user’s device such as a phone or smart tv does the hard work of making a quality play, so a lower power server device can work).

If this is contained within your home, your home wifi or network should be fine to do this, even up to 4k if your network is good enough quality. If the 5 people are outside your home then your internet bandwidth - particularly your upload bandwidth - and your and their internet quality will be important determinant of quality of experience. It will also need more configuring but it is doable.

This doesn’t need to be expensive. A raspberry pi with storage attached would be able to run Jellyfin or Plex, and would offer a decent experience over a home network if you direct play (I.e. just serve up the files for the end users device to play). You might need something more powerful for 5 simultaneous direct play streams but it would still be in the realms of low powered cheap ARM devices.

If you want to use transcoding and hardware acceleration you’d need better hardware for 5 people to stream simultaneously. For example an intel or amd cpu, and ideally even something with a discrete graphics card. That doesn’t mean a full desktop PC - it could be an old PC or a minipc.

However most end user devices such as TVs, PCs, Phones and tablets are perfectly capable of direct playing 1080p video themselves without the server transcoding. Transcoding has lots of uses - you can change the audio or video format on the fly, or enable streaming of 4k video from a powerful device to a less powerful device - but its not essential.

Direct play is fine for most uses. The only limitation is the files on the server need to be in a format that can be played on the users device. So you may need to stick to mainstream codecs and containers; things like mp4 files and h.264/avc. You could get issues with users not being able to playback files if you have say mkv files and h. 265/hevc or vp9. Then you’d either need to install the codecs in the users device (which may not be possible in a smart tv for example) or use transcoding (so the server converts the format on the fly to something the users device can use but then needing a more powerful server)

I prefer Jellyfin as its free and open source. It has free apps for the end user for many devices including smart tvs, streaming sticks, phones, tablets and PCs. Its slightly less user friendly than plex to set up but not much. And the big benefit is your users are only exposed to what you have in your library.

Plex is slightly more user friendly but commerical. You have to pay for a licence to get the best features and even then it pushes advertising and tries to get your users to buy commercial content. Jellyfin does not do that at all.

Finally if your plan is to self host in the cloud, again this is doable but then you stray into needing to pay for a powerful enough remote computer/server, the bandwidth for all content to be served up (in addition to your existing home internet) and the potential risk of issues with privacy and even copyright infringement issues around the content you are serving. A self hosted device in your home is much more secure and private. A cloud hosted solution can be secure but youre always at risk of the host company snooping your data or having to enforce copyright laws.

Edit: the other thing to consider ia an FTP server. If you just want to share the files, its very simple to set up. What Jellyfin and Plex offer is convenience by having a nice library to organise things, and serving up the media. But direct play from a media server is not far off just downloading the file from an ftp server to your home device and playing it. But you can also download files from a Jellyfin server so I’d say its worth going the extra step and to use a dedicated media server over ftp.

I’m not aware of an alternative TV App for android tv. On my android TV live tv is also wrapped within the android interface but other sources like HDMI inputs are not.

If you can switch to HDMI sources outside the android apps then maybe the best thing to do is get a separate basic satellite tuner device?

It seems shitty that google are effectively hiding your inbuilt tv tuner behind an app with all their advertising and other crap.

No, because it suits Reddit to not have people leaving Reddit to another social network via links.

And 2% of a big number is a big number. People too often misunderstand what percentages really are about and think a low percentage is akin to nothing.

In 2015 there were an estimated 2bn desktop computers actively in use in the world. That means 40m pcs running linux - a small proportion but a big number in its own right. It’s roughly equivalent to the entire population of Canada.

Both stats are from worldometers.info, and there are likely more than 2bn Pcs in use now.

I use X11 with Nvidia without issue. While I like the idea of Wayland, and it being pushed a lot now, it really remains beta software. While I think it’s good Wayland is being focused on and promoted by the distros and DEs, I think it’s a bit of a distraction from Linux as a whole.

I’ve had to switch back to X11 on both Nvidia and AMD devices due to bugs or compatibility issues in Wayland.

I agree about VR - I keep dual boot windows on my PC and VR is about the only thing I use it for now. But the result is I just use VR less.

You can’t install Windows 11 without bloat and spyware, all you can do is minimise it and much of it cannot be disabled or removed. Linux can have 0 bloat and spy ware.

That is the difference.

Moderation is broken because there is no longer a consensus on what is “right” or “wrong”. The very term implies that there is a moderate position that is allowed, and you cull the extremes.

That consensus in moderating used to be simple in most adult spaces - no aggression/abuse/fighting, no porn. Everything else was fine.

Now things have drifted - you have corporate censorship in social media to respond to some perceived need not to “endorse” views. But you also have users deciding some topics are not allowed to be discussed and certain view points are censored just because some people disagree with them. There seems to be a notion that you have to “protect” people from being offended or that certain ideas are just dangerous or wrong.

I’ve even seen a moderator on Lemmy describe “freedom of speech” as nothing more than a right wing wolf whistle and banning someone.

This whole CEO murder is just highlighting how a complex and multifaceted nuanced case cannot be reduced into a simple good vs evil narrative. The old mainstream media consensus that everyone shows “sympathy for victim, condemnation for the bad guy” is just restricting debate and discussion on something that raises complex and fundamental questions about our society.

The “consensus” on what viewpoints are allowed is breaking down and people are mistaking them personally being offended as a barometer of what is right or wrong.

This is not open source? There is no license just a statement saying free to use for personal and commercial projects, but don’t redistribute or resell.

This freeware at best but if you contribute to this project it’s not clear who owns the work.

According to Wikipedia, A028 is an open/free version of Albertus and widely available on Linux.

You could also download versions of Albertus itself to use in KDE - there seem to be lots of versions.

Fonts are easy to install in KDE, if what you want is not in your package manager then download the font files and install it with the Font manager tool in Settings (just look for Fonts). You can install fonts from files you have downloaded or download more from the KDE store (I don’t know if A028 is in the store).

It’ll be available immediately in LibreOffice, and you can also use Konsole settings to use the font for your terminal.

Just on the KDE front, I’m assuming you’ve optimised your KDE set up for your PC?

If not, first open your Settings app and in the search box type “Effects” - disable all the fancy desktop effects.

Next, if you’re on X11, go into the “Display and Monitor” section and disable compositing (you can also temporairly disable this with Alt+Shift+F12 to see what impact it has). This option is not available in Wayland; but you may be better using X11 if you don’t have a dedicated GPU? I’m not sure I’d be messing with Wayland on an old laptop; I’ve had serious issues on a high end PC - definitely improved with 6.1, but I’m using X11 still.

But KDE 6 isn’t as svelt as KDE 5 was, so even optimised it may just not be up to the job.

XFCE is a good shout, and should run nicely on a 2013 laptop.

Polybar works on KDE, it’s not restricted to Tiling WMs like i3. You can add it to your Autostart apps in KDE either directly with arguments or a simple shell script to run multiple custom bars.

https://github.com/polybar/polybar

Edit: This blog post I found shows an example of a similar tiled end result in KDE with Polybar (but with a very different colour scheme) https://blog.rishikumar.dev/posts/plasma_polybar/

Then I’d definitely set up a test system in a VM on your own PC (I.e. not the actual server machines). Even if you don’t want to use Docker, you can set up a complete version of your new server and practice deploying Jellyfin and Plex, and then test accessing it “remotely” to manage it. You can then decide whether switching away from Win11 is worth it.

If you’re not familiar with the process of setting up a linux server then I’d actually suggest Debian instead of OpenSuSe. Looking at the Jellyfin guide for example it specifically covers the steps for installing directly onto a Debian host (while OpenSuSE set up means using the Fedora RPM guide). There are also straight forward guides for setting up a Debian server.

Personally I’m not a fan of Ubuntu (because of Canonical and Snap etc) but there may also be a good choice just because there are so many guides out there for setting up Ubuntu server.

Docker is pretty easy to use, and is easy to play with either on your own system (linux or windows) or in VM guest system. The learning curve isn’t that high and Jellyfin for example has a clear set up guide for docker on their wiki.

But radarr, sonarr etc can be installed directly within linux without docker. The Servarr wiki (that these projects use officially to share information as they’re so similar) has lots of straight forward guides for set up on Linux, Windows, Mac etc as well as Docker.

I have a Linux guest VM set up with a Radarr, Sonarr etc set up, VPN and torrent set up. It was easy to do and means its network activity is all securely contained away from my host system. The tools let me set naming rules and file preferences. The library is a shared n folder in my host system, and that is included in my Jellyfin library. So all I have to do is subscribe to something i am interested in and it will just appear in my library once downloaded. The servarr tools are extremely convenient and worth looking at if you’re adding to that 30tb library over time.

OpenSuSE is a good distro with nice tools like Yast that have a decent CLI interface, and has server releases. The leap edition is stable but relatively up to date.

But there are lots of viable alternatives, and if you’re going to use Docker then the host distro is probably not as important as you think.

Simplest route may be to set up a demo server within a VM and see which one chimes the most with your style of use and maintenance. You could have a functioning demo server with docker and deploy both jellyfin and Plex in 20mins.

This is great, Locomotion was a good game in its own right. Hopefully this will be an opportunity to change and fix the game a little going forward - its a game that never quite reached its full potential although already a good game.

Thanks for sharing! I’m going to download it and try it with my gog version. Its 80% off now on fog now BTW.

In this situation I’d save a copy of the sheet to my phone in a standard format and use a non google app. The file itself can be backed up to on line storage and remain accessible from multiple devices but you remove it from googles walled garden.

On android if you want open source then Collabra is a full office suite based on LibreOffice. Alternatively LibreOffice Viewer is the official libre app - ok for viewing files but with an experimental mode for editing (not really ready for editing yet).

WPS Office is a free office suite with add or paid version which has a good reputation.

Microsoft Office is also an option.

If you want to stay with google sheets and just view the file offline then try saving a copy to your phone in a different format and view that with the Google spreadsheet app (if it can still do that). But I’d take the pop up as a sign that its time to move on from googles shitty products.

I was very confused for a moment as this is how my Lemmy looks - I’m using the Photon interface (e.g. https://photon.lemmy.world/) Pretty much identical.

It’s probably more complicated precisely because of the multiple desktop environments and X11 set up. Windows you can make one tool to work on all desktops.

You’d probably need systems for KDE and Gnome, etc. Perhaps Wayland may make this simpler?

Ultimately I suspect it’s just not a priority when the complexity is factored in. An animated desktop is pretty to look at but probably not a project getting lots of devs interested in if it’s so complex to implement and maintain at present?