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Note that they have their own ad-blocker (not as good as uBo, mind you).

I like Vivaldi even though it has started to become a little bit too much of everything for quite some time (mail, calendar, RSS, notes luckily one can deactivate all that). For years, Vivaldi has been my second browser next to FF (which I've been using since... way before it was a thing as I started with Mosaic ;)). I also have a copy of Brave.

That said, yesterday I installed LibreWolf on my Linux machine to test it out as an alternative to FF because, well, that last change they made was one more I'm not a huge fan of and maybe it's time to start considering changing my main browser and I'm not sure I want a chromium-based browser as my main one.

I don't know it, my first question would be: who really owns it?
Then, I would immediately be suspicious of a deal promising me a 90% discount... But that's just me.

As suggested, I would also encourage you to use separate emails for each of you, no matter how close you are— and that's coming from an almost 30 years (and counting) lasting couple.

To be clear, we both have full access to the other accounts (email, health, everything, including financials) so keeping our own little 'secret' is not what's at stake for us (not mentioning that we simply respect the other's privacy). We just want to remove useless noise from our inboxes, and to be honest I really don't care much about reading her emails like she doesn't care about reading mine much either

So, we own both our own domain name (name/surname). I also own other ones, including the one I'm using to log in here and to blog. I also heavily rely on email aliases/relays to subscribe to whatever I want to, so I know can always easily delete a spam-contaminated alias the moment I notice it starts sending me too much spam, without compromising my main email.

Are you trying to be hired by Google? Then, maybe

More seriously, I don't know if this matters. Do people really care about the address?

I've been using my own domain names for decades, what I'm using behind that name doesn't show. But I'm also old enough I don't need to worry about (un)pleasing any potential employer.

How does this even make sense? The criminals would just move to another platform like SimpleX or use a VPN.

Next move (and not just from Sweden): make the use of a VPN (and any fully encrypted service) illegal for the average citizen—who needs a backdoor when the law makes it a crime to simply use full E2EE? Let those be used with trust by the army, the press, organizations and people like that just not by common people that should have no privacy at all.

Politician incompetency and dishonesty will finish to ruin what little of Europe remains and what the word democracy was supposed to mean (which is not to consider your citizen like clueless children that can't understand shit and that can't be trusted).

But in exchange of ruining that they will get some more power and/or money, so that's fine I suppose.

I encourage anyone with a brain to try for themselves instead of letting others make decisions for them.

May I ask how do one try the trustworthiness of a VPN?

I mean, if the question is to decide if it works or not, well, chances are it does work but that's not saying much. As much as I appreciate your suggestion to make up our own mind, well, in such a situation we can hardly decide by ourselves and we need independent audits. So, my question would be: are there any for that VPN you mentioned (I don't know anything about it myself, never heard about it, never used it, which means I have nothing against or for it).

Thx for sharing. I do (happily) use Kagi as already stated in my other comment but I'm always willing to be more informed.

I've been using it for more than a year and it's worth every cent. It's not perfect, obviously, but it's already so good. Useful results (no SEO crap) no ads, no tracking, great filtering tools (those alone, to me at least, are already worth paying for) and real cool features. If you have not done so already, get their 100 search trial account and you will see how you like it. I did that and I switched to a paid sub less than 3 days later.

When my first year ended I thought to myself, well, I could try to save me some money here and did not renew kinda yeah, Kagi's cool and all but why pay when there are free options? I ran back to Kagi in the same month I decided to not renew

I if I had to use a free search, it probably would be Brave Search, FYI

We have not owned a TV since the 00s and have no intention of buying one any time soon, but I had a look at the FUTO website you linked and it's interesting read (even for the non-expert I'm).

Thx for sharing

Hi & welcome from a fellow Mint user.
It's a stable distribution that comes with a lot of things preinstalled (so less extra stuff to install, but also a lot of stuff you might not need)

• +1 for Encryption, both Luks for the system disk and whatever other internal drive and for USB stick or external storage. If someone was to steal my computer I would pissed off but OK, I can deal with it knowing they can't access my files. Use a good password (mine is 20-ish characters long all random and, yeah, I've memorized them but I have a decent working memory
• • for (automated) backups.
• +1 for automated updates
• +1 for not installing from any source. It's tempting but it should be the exception (for me, it means yt-dlp and Mullvad for the most, of there is also my RSS app of choice newsboat since it's not officially available anymore :/)
• I don't use antivirus on Linux (nor on my Mac). But I seldom download anything and don't open attachments I'm not expecting to receive
• I would not play with services as a beginner as you risk deactivating something you need.
• The firewall as gui that's installed by default (on my Mint, at least ;): its Gufw on the command line and it's called Firewall Configuration in the main Mint menu. Open it, type your password, activate the 'Status' toggle. Done. Then you can start adding rules as you need them.

I would add to that:

• Don't rush to tweak everything at the same time. Try one at a time, it's easier to revert back.
• Backup your home folder regularly. Not only does it contain all your precious files but it also contains most of your settings and tweaks. So, if you ever need to reinstall you will get back all those settings/tweaks when copying back your home to the fresh install.

On that topic,I'm not much of a geek (a 50-something dude and a 35+ years Apple customer) but I did learn to use git to keep a backup of my config folder. So, when I screw up something (so far, Mint has not once screwed up anything by itself, the few issues I had to deal with were all me-related) , I know I can revert back to the previous version of whatever settings I've just damaged without difficulty. Learning the basic of Git is not hard, it's just...odd, and it works great. If it was compatible with LibreOffice files I would love to use if for that too...