Truly an xkcd #1172 situation.

Although I never used it, I am aware that Calibre can serve books in your local network. I imagine that this offers some position and annotation sync.

Also, a bit off-topic for this sub, but… how do you read? E-readers? Tablets? Software choices?

Unfortunately, there was never great ebook hardware. I use a tablet with Android. KOReader for ePub, constantly trying new Android PDF readers but finding nothing decent.

While not intentionally, running Syncthing between all my computers means that my PDF annotations get synced across devices. ePub ones do not; afaik KOReader uses its own metadata format that it stores as a standalone file.

Before, when I was still in university, I used Zotero also for annotation management. Feels like an overkill nowadays since I only read for leisure.

https://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/68004.html

Garrett’s post makes a great point in only a handful of lines. Strongly recommended reading for anyone who organises a community of any kind.

Thunderbird’s Calendar supports local, off-line calendars and tasks.

It’s the best FOSS calendar I have used, even if it has its rough edges.

Let’s not overstate Duolingo’s effectiveness for language learning.

The technological challenge to adopting a self-taught language learning method into an app is rather small. You just need the content. Either you develop the course under a Free Culture license, or you purchase the rights for an existing method and you port it. Plus maybe some volunteers to handle user-interaction.

A good example is the VHS Lernportal which implements three levels of German class in a way that actually has some pedagogical merit. It’s killer-feature is nothing technological, but that they have some teachers in the backoffice that will read your occasional text-production exercises and offer corrections (no, language tool wouldn’t be able to replace humans in that case, because language tool doesn’t know what you are trying to say and therefore gives you multiple guesses but no way to know which one you actually need).

Greenshot (GPLv3) is a powerful screenshot tool with its own basic image editor.

I have been very disappointed that Fedora stopped making changelogs accessible for years. It used to be that you could easily toggle them on in Yum, but with DNF it’s always “no info found”.

TIL, thanks. This might be a viable path for me.

I can give it a shot, certainly. One of the main contributors behind it is in my RSS reader so there’s some name recognition there. Future pricing is not final though, so I can’t budget for it before committing.

It might not be a solution for everyone, but you can self host a git repository on your static site!

I like the concept and the aesthetics, but I guess you still need to run a git server?

If you are willing to self-host and are scared of the gitea license shake-up, use forgejo.

When it comes to self-hosting, there’s also the costs. Hosting providers have been hitting me with price hikes one after another this year, so I’m looking into shutting down some servers instead.

Okay, that sounds like it hits the spot. I’ll read up on them. Happy to hear testimonials for existing users.

Looking again, it seems like more packages are available for the Tumbleweed stream, compared to Leap. I was testing Leap.

Oh, that’s a great idea. The whole concept of immutable OSes passed me by - I’ve read the terms before at some point, but I have no idea how they work and which problems they solve. Definitely ideal candidates for my experiment.

I gave Jami a very extensive go with family, and sadly it didn’t deliver a usable experience if your device is a mobile one or the network is not a fixed, high-speed connection.

Indeed, it appears that the open-core of LanguageTool is the only FOSS option still going. Only a couple more abandoned projects come up.

I’m going to take “favourite” at face value, i.e. that I actually like, not just that I am forced to use because the alternative doesn’t exist (e.g. my bank’s app or the post-office’s app) or isn’t viable (PDF editors on Android).

Libby, the lending library app. I could avoid it and stick to physical media and piracy, but it’s a well-designed app with a decent catalogue and given that it’s a library and not me purchasing DRMed files, I found the ethical proposition there tolerable.