Nothing in the cloud.
We have a proxmox cluster, which is where this would probably go, but I would prefer a non-integrated solution, rather a single thing I can either put within a proxmox vm (nested virtualization) or on an on premise piece of physical hardware.
You may be interested in nix's home manager. It allows you to manage all of your home directory configs (dotfiles), as nix code. It has built in rollbacks, and can be git tracked.
You can then find other people's home manager configs on github.
I use meshcentral to manage a few (like 6) computers and do remote assistance. Best solution for your usecase imo.
You want firewalld. Not declarative (probably?), but the only option that can dynamically change firewall rules based on the network you are connected to.
Look into firewalld zones.
If you use pacman you are using Arch repositories.
Incorrect. There is manjaro, but there also is msys2, a windows program with the goal of making linux tools available on windows by recompiling all of them. That's very far from the arch philosophy and repos.
And ubuntu and debian have massively different repositories. One of them gives you the actual firefox package, and the other installs firefox via a closed source backend, app store called snap, when you attempt to install firefox using apt.
And then there is also the version differences, like debian stable is going to have much older software than ubuntu.
I heard obfsproxy
Yeah, tor obs4 bridges.
But somehow, my high school managed to block those. My high school was literally more locked down than the great firewall of China.
I set up: https://github.com/cognetwork-dev/Metallic
At first, then I eventually switched to https://github.com/v2ray/v2ray-core as metallic struggled on some things. Both v2ray and xray are built for the great firewall of China, and iirc, they use the same tech.
It's not too fast though. That privacy comes at a price. This may be the slowest proxy/vpn out there (although it's speedy enough for normal web browsing), whereas wireguard is the fastest. Maybe you want something in between? It depends on your threat model.
Yes.
Ubuntu and debian both use apt, but differing repos. Different versions of ubuntu/debian use different repos, with newer/older software.
Considering I know someone, personally, who also made a scientific advancement at a young age, yes, it is possible.
They taught themselves python, then how to inference and train machine learning models, then used image recognition models to detect their sister's illness, which had visual signs.
They had to get help from someone with a phd to test this on a larger scale, cuz resources, but I absolutely believe a middle/high schooler could do it.
It's not that phd's are incapable of doing it, it's simply that they never bothered taking a crack at this problem, using this method.
My problem with this is, what stops people from simply violating the license anyways? Is futo going to go after every license violator? Do they even have the power to do so?
I've seen people make adware versions of closed source apps as well, so even not having the code public and online doesn't stop people.
Sometimes whatever you are working with will have outdated or really poor docs, so an advanced internet info aggregator is useful in that sense.
I started learning nix before chatgpt and it was a nightmare. I had to continually ask for help on discord, of all places, for things that should really be in the docs.
Chatgpt makes nix easier, except not really because it's info is outdated a lot of the time.
For example would you visit a website if it was hosted on Windows server? If they use ESXi? Or if user account are managed with Active Directory or firebase?
No, and I visit cloudfare websites too.
But I still agree with everything OP says. Like the warnings in the F-Droid android app store informing users that an app promotes non-free services, but it doesn't stop me, or anyone else, from installing them. I simply think people should be informed that services are less free than they can be, and made aware of the many risks that come with non-free services. It's an idealist stance, a goal to push our reality towards, rather than a way of life for most (those who treat it like a way of life are very, very rare).
But this is a false analogy anyways. Windows servers aren't banning users behind tor, or cgnat for no apparent reason like cloudfare is. I think we should discourage the use of nonfree services, but it's not a yes/no binary. Certain things are more free than others, and we should encourage people to choose the freer option. Cloudfare tunneling a linux service is more free than hosting your website using vendor locked cloud tech (AWS s3, lambda, dns, etc). Hosting your won website on an windows server is still not free, but arguably more free than vendor locked cloud stuff. Linux deployments using only FOSS is arguably the most free software you can get, but you still have to deal with nonfree hardware and drivers.
I still use GitHub. But I hate that it has no ipv6 connectivity, meaning that those who don't have ipv4 are excluded, and it's absolutely unacceptable for a tech company of all things, to not keep up to date. The moment federation gets added to forgejo or another one of the self hostable git forges, I will switch (but probably mirror stuff for recruiter purposes), since that's more inclusive than github, but right now, they are not more inclusive than github because instances are small and do not interoperate.
"Learning curve" is an understatement. Nix is one of the most poorly documented projects I've seen, next to openstack. Coming into it with no background in functional programming didn't help.
Maybe I shouldn't have tried to package openstack on nix.
But I've tried to package other stuff, like quarto, and that was a nightmare. Nixpkgs didn't have an updated pandoc and I spent an eternity asking around for help, to try to package it. An updated version just got pushed to unstable a few days ago. The same matrix channels I joined to ask for help have been discussing this since then. Props on them for getting it working, but anyone who says that you can easily package anything, is capping. You need to have an understanding of the nix language, nix packaging (both of which are poorly documented), and a rudimentary packaging ecosystem of what you are trying to package.
Don't even get me started on flakes vs nonflakes.
I still use nix-shell for all my development environments, because it's the best way for reproducible environments I can share I've found.