I made a switch to Smart Launcher which has been quite fantastic. They don't rely on a subscription model like most other launchers which is a huge plus in my book. They offer quite a bit of options for customizing your screen. Not as much as Nova, but it's still good. I used Nova for a long time as well, but this has made it easier to transition to. Aside from that, Hyperion Launcher has plenty of options as well.
I have been using Proxmox VE with Docker running on the host not managed by Proxmox, and then Cockpit to manage NFS Shares with Home Assistant OS running in a VM. It's been pretty rock solid. That was until I updated to Version 9 last night, it's been a nightmare getting the docker socket to be available. I think Debian Trixie may have some sort of extra layers of protection, I haven't investigated it too much, but my plan tomorrow and this week is to migrate everything to Debian 12 as that's the tried and true OS for me and I know it's quite stable with Cockpit, docker and so forth with KVM for my Home Assistant installation.
One other OS for consideration if you are wanting to check it out is XCP-NG which I played with and Home Assistant with that was blazing fast, but they don't allow NFS shares to be created and using existing data on my drives was not possible, so I would've had to format them .
Cloudflare tunnels support higher port numbers. I've done it in the past with Portainer. Also Proxmox which listens on 8006. Portainer on 9443.
As a 16 yr old I started running my own BBS on a 1200bps external modem on an Older Atari 800xl computer (1990) It was a completely new world for me. :) I later upgraded to a 14400 buad external modem for the max and that was when modems peaked at 38400 baud. I was an Atari geek so naturally when I had the 14400, I ran it on an Atari 520ST computer.
I still remember the days of being a SYSOP and the exhilaration in talking with other people from across the country who would dial in and have a nice one-on-one convo. It didnt' last too long though, I got married shortly after high school and out went the BBS. But it wasn't so bad, because at that time, the Net was starting to take off and out went the BBS's around the world. There are many out there via telnet if you can find a directory, they are a fun trip back in time. :)
Are there any plans to make a Flatpak version of this? I've moved to an immutable OS and none of the options you have will install. Flatpaks are their preferred method. I know I could self host my own version which may be what I may end up doing anyway, but I'd prefer to have it more local yet another docker container. :)
Edit: I just went with the Appimage which works.
This is what I use and it's quite impressive.
https://community.home-assistant.io/t/simple-scheduler-addon/174326
I've had it for a few years and it never has failed to run on time every time. Can automate more than lights with it and it's really just a point/click set and forget type of thing.
My setup for my lights. :)
If your router supports Freshtomato firmware, it also has adguard you can enable too.
Like others have said Arch is not as intimidating as it would appear to be. Over the last couple of years, they improved IHMO the most difficult process for the average user of installing Arch. You now just run archinstall Then follow the system prompts. It's constantly being improved. If you do go with Arch, aside from using Pacman to install apps, you can use "Yay" or "Paru" or others which pull from the vast AUR repository.
I used Arch for a few years and recently moved over to Aurora Linux (Immutable KDE distro adapted from Fedora's CoreOS and uBlueOS which is an offshoot of CoreOS) Specifically, I use the Developer experience of Aurora which gives you a VSCode type of editor as well as Podman desktop included as well as other items. It's meant for those who wish to develop and not have to worry about keeping the system up to date. It runs updates in the background and rebooting your system will run the updates.
The reason I left Arch was simple, I used to like to live on the edge of software as well, until it took one too many hastily released updates which borked my Arch system. My home PC has morphed from being my dedicated computer to my wife's and my computer which is fine, but I'd like to keep it available for her avoiding the need to do a repair because an update broke it.
Keep an eye out for the KDE Linux OS which they have in development and not yet for use, but is earmarked for being the official immutable OS for KDE which will receive their bleeding edge updates. https://linuxiac.com/kde-announced-its-kde-linux-distro/ https://community.kde.org/KDE_Linux
I plan on migrating to that once it's finished. :) I've become a fan of immutable OS's because they allow you to roll back if something should go wrong. Which it rarely does :)
I know about that function. It's mostly just about if there were any other options. I mean, I can find a folder icon pack probably, but that would make the ones I wanted customized but and also not match. For example, if I did a green folder and it was not flat like the Breeze ones are then it would look out of place until I replaced everyone with the one from the pack.
I know it was available in KDE 4 and 5 and haven't seen it updated for 6 which I understand. It has come in handy to organize some of the more important folders for myself and family like this:
My question is, is there a different way of assigning folder colors without the plugin? I imagine a custom icon, but I admit, right clicking and choosing the tint made it dead simple! :)
This is anecdotal, only to say that the Linksys WRT-54G IMHO is/was a beast in the SOHO world. Back in 2013, I worked for the county replacing older equipment and it was time to upgrade the router in the fairgrounds lobby at the start of summer. Up we went to the rafters where it was and it was quite dusty in there, tons of pigeon feathers and miserably hot in the attic as most are. We pulled the router from service and replaced it with the new one already configured. The wrt54G was COVERED in dust, Pigeon droppings and feathers stuck to it. It ran forever that way I suspect. From what I was told, is was installed about 7 or 8 years prior, maybe longer.
To this day, I think Linksys must have partnered with Nokia's wizards for how sturdy that router was/is. You can still find them in our second hand stores and most people push DD-WRT on them. But since they are 10/100, they're not as popular anymore.
You could always use ntfy.sh if you are wanting to keep it light weight, I know there seems to be a heavy following and happy community with it. I personally use Gotify which has been nice and easy to use and just works for my needs. :) I looked at the shoutrrr repo and it seems to be either abandoned or just no longer updating maybe because their is no need to in the Dev's eyes. They also develop Watchtower which hasn't been touched in about 2 years ago. I have never had any issues with Watchtower so I think it may not need much maintenance. I do see though that they are working on a new project: https://github.com/containrrr/shepherd but it's also a bit stale.
Invariably, when I try to install themes, or anything from Plasma's menu's I get the following error, If I'm lucky, I get get a few pages in, other times it's right off the bat like this time. Is this due to an overwhelming of the servers or something else?
I keep landing back to Proxmox, My primary use is to run the Home Assistant OS VM which is quite fantastic there. And also, I have NFS sharing setup on the Proxmox server so I can share it between my machines and my home Linux boxes. I'm on Proxmox 8 though and not 9. Debian 13 with Proxmox 9 it turns out at least when I tried it, is really locked down now for running Docker via the host. (Proxmox machine) With Proxmox 8, I can still install Docker and run my containers there, then use Portainer to manage them sometimes, but rarely now days. You can also probably do it the "Correct way" as some may believe by setting up a VM or LXC in Promox to host docker containers. I do that with one subset of containers but not all.
Another option you may want to consider is XCP-NG, which is another hypervisor and IMHO ran Home Assistant a tad bit faster for me, but it will not allow you to mount existing drives without erasing them (I can't do that with my disks). Additionally, it seems to be on an out of date CentOS build which is no longer updated. (My notes from this are from a year ago when I tried it and I think some of it has changed, but for storage: https://docs.xcp-ng.org/storage/) You can see what's going on there.
Most people will say to host Truenas or something like that in a VM via Proxmox but honestly, it isn't too difficult to set up with a tool like Cockpit to manage the shares. I've played with most of the setups recently and recently tried going with a Debian 12 install on bare metal with the Home Assistant VM running which I could, but I had more crashes with the server and it never started the VM in spite of being told to do so. I honestly didn't stick around though, so YMMV if you go that route.