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by PaulHoule 287 days ago
So if I get this right you’re looking for a cross-platform password manager?

My belief is that OneDrive is a complete waste of time and you’re best turning it off. If you need file syncing use Dropbox. My first experience with OneDrive was (1) Office saved there by default and (2) if it wasn’t working you couldn’t save documents and if you have that kind of experience once you’ll never use the product again.
1 comments
singlepaynews 287 days ago
That’s part of but not fully it, thanks for the validation that it’s not just me re: onedrive.

I think partially I’m wrestling with the almost philosophical question of whether Linux is viable for consumers, because ideally I’d be a consumer, but I’m so frustrated by switching costs between windows/mac that surely open source has to be the solution, and loop from this point.

There are, in my mind, 3 kinds of data loss when my laptop breaks: 1) passwords 2) files 3) applications

(1) and (2) are at least in theory solved by simply embracing vendor lock in. In practice you really can just keep buying Apple forever, or figure out OneDrive for real and it will work.

(3) is where I think I’m breaking with the current state of the industry, but it is not mandatory imo that I wouldn’t be able to get my vscode, pgadmin, cad application, office suite, etc. all downloaded with their config intact on a new machine.

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PaulHoule 287 days ago
One answer to some of those problems is to use remote desktop technology.

Last time I went to a hackathon I brought a 15 inch Alienware from 2017 which has bad connections in the USB system and is on the edge of death. I loaded up Visual Studio and the Unity Framework ahead of time so I'd be ready to use the same tools as my team.

Personally my favorite hackathon kit is a tablet plus a keyboard and a mouse. Remote desktop into a big computer and you have the sleekest kit anyone has and the most powerful computer. I have a powerful computer at home but I have ADSL, it is possible to remote into but latency is pretty bad.

My plan, the next time I go to something like that, is to set up a cloud instance ahead of time and just boot it up. Somewhere between $1-$2 an hour would buy a powerful machine which would really be a bargain if I only want to run it for 20 hours on an occasional weekend.

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singlepaynews 286 days ago
"set up a cloud instance ahead of time and just boot it up"

That sentence is the closest to what I'm imagining--the thin client to personal computer, your use case is interesting (hackathon peripherals); I'm thinking of this as a lifetime-durability play.

Basically what if my home's NAS could also serve all my applications, and at any given time I really just have a KVM into it. If we assume network is fast enough, that would achieve the UX I want, which is that the KVM is effectively disposable and the personal computer stuff all stays intact.

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