for the presentation part, watch standup. watch them construct the story, the path they guide you through, how it all comes together. notice how they lay it out, every syllable, every stutter, how it’s all in the service of delivery. planting and harvesting the callbacks. inadvertently, you’ll start picking up on techniques and implementing them and you’ll notice people hanging on your every word.

as to the actual part converting them over, determine who you’re talking to. if people are aware of the issue but are apathetic about implementing change, that presents one set of issues. if they’re completely unaware that there’s a problem, you’re better off changing environments.

I have an easy job, in my roles I implement the privacy aspect for tech-illiterate people from a security standpoint and I have a dictatorial position - they have to listen to me. I also don’t have tech debt when I implement their IT strategy, i.e. there’s never an issue with an OS or app they love or are used to. all of that is way, way harder when faced with someone who can’t imagine life without a $1000 easily breakable/losable/stealable slab of glass with the blue bubble and the tiks and toks and whatnot.

edit: there’s this thing https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/may/24/what-i-discovered-when-i-asked-amazon-to-tell-me-everything-alexa-had-heard I just saw at HN. this dude having a blissfully ignorant walk down melancholy lane, pondering the details of his decade-long spyware-ridden life, completely oblivious to their most intimate family shit just being out there in the world, for anyone to abuse just so he can be a more effective consumer. reaching those people, although possible, is such a tremendous effort I don’t think it’s worth it.

thanks everyone for the suggestions. second run: 1 cup groats (thanks for the term), 1 cup water, splash of olive oil, pinch of salt. cover, bring to boil, switch to lowest setting, let simmer. got a glass lid, so monitoring progress.

20 min - still water left. 30 min - still some water visible. 40 min - none visible, occasional buble pops through. turn off heat, leave covered for 10 mins. sadly, there’s some water at the bottom, was hoping everything will get absorbed.

third run will be one setting above lowest for the simmer part thus hopefully shortening it to 30 mins, and then leaving it covered for 15 minutes, hopefully that will do the trick.

that’s for Fedora, for Ubuntu it’s toram I think? or was that for older versions… Esc during boot to verify, if it goes “loading to RAM” then you know it’s working.

to add to what others already said, the work from linux-surface is being adopted in the mainline, so it is possible that your hardware is already supported in a modern distro, like Fedora. boot it off a live USB image and poke around, you’ll get a better feel for it.

pro tip, at the GRUB menu press ‘e’ to edit the first item and then add rd.live.ram and that should load the image to RAM. you can then remove the USB and it’ll be way faster to navigate and it won’t touch your existing SSD install.

all Apple devices are part of a covert peer-to-peer network and its primary purpose is to facilitate the Airtags and find-my-shit apps. it runs on desktops, laptops, phones, ipads, watches, etc., including when they’re supposedly off. you can’t turn it off or opt out of it and what that crap additionally does and how secure it is is unknown.

having said that, if you run linux on an old intel-based macbook or similar (say, up to 2015 models) you’re out of that racket and similarly all Apple or iCloud based crap. they do have a permanently enabled IME but that’s true for the majority of devices sold and, dependent on your threat model, isn’t an issue per se.

not sure about the “credit card” angle as you can’t buy a new Apple device that runs linux, the asahi mess is limited to M1/2 models which are like 5 years old at this point.

using laptops as a forever-plugged-in device (regardless if workstation or server) isn’t the greatest idea. as an intermediary solution, like until you have something more permanent in place, sure. otherwise, look elsewhere.

limiting battery charge isn’t available on all laptop models and is aimed at preserving the battery’s functionality; it doesn’t solve the issue of a forever charged and never emptied battery. on the other hand, removing the battery on a lot of models limits their performance, significantly.

what is a viable solution is if you get a laptop board that runs at full power without battery, you can remove the board from the laptop, retrofit it with better cooling and additional storage (mini-PCI or M.2 to SATA adapters) and you end up with an energy-efficient server. but that requires a lot of work and is not something recommended for non-enthusiasts.

in short, sell it or swap it for something more adequate.

so, like torify up until now? tried it on a couple of apps as a replacement, works fine. the rust build chain though, madonn’…

there’s this thing: STAR WARS GRINDHOUSE

that’s the part that’s bothering you? not evil corp doing evil things in the charge of its evil overlord?

do you have a ballpark figure of potential savings in $/€ per annum? and for what hardware? I remember calculating something similar and I don’t think I broke $20 in total, so promptly forgot about it.

oh it’s the “au lot” guy

tried 'em all and they all suck. it’s possible there are options that work for monolingual people, but for simultaneously using 3-4 languages without annoying switching back and forth, there is no alternative.

since android 15 you can disable network access to any app and that’s how I run gboard, the only google app I have on my mobile devices.

not a plex user but someone buried the lede here… to me, this is the neon sign that screams GTFO:

we noticed that you’ve accessed libraries in the past

what business of yours is it to notice my private comings and goings?! what other actionable intel do y’all keep in your logs?! bye!

I ran something similar a while ago; it automated the steps you’re describing so it downloaded every new video from the channels I’m subscribed to along with metadata. I gave that up as it’s hella inefficient. what I have now is just a media sink by way of macast and I can send videos for playback to my media PC. so if you don’t need those videos for archiving purposes, try it out.

don’t go with server variants of the OS. they are intended for boxes that work without display and keyboard, which you have. instead, install any normal distro you’re familiar with. it’s infinitely easier to fix something with the full GUI at your disposal.

this is just your first install, you will iterate, and through that process you’ll get better and leaner, in terms of underlying OS. think of it as training wheels on a bike, you’ll pull them off eventually.

wired connection only, leave wireless turned off, and assign it a static IP address.

don’t do containerS, do one container first. figure out where you’re gonna store the compose files, where it will store data, how you will back that data up, etc. then add another. does it fit into your setup? do you need to modify something? rinse. repeat.

casaOS, aside from it’s murky background (some chinese startup or sumsuch, forgot?) doesn’t provide that path forward nor allows you to learn something, too much hand holding.

good luck.