I don’t know the details but both use services from the carrier. I think google hosts for the carriers but there are checks thats rely on the carrier. If you look at the details for google messages it address specific URLs based on the carrier.

For iPhone its all carrier depend. If the carrier doesn’t support it, iPhone will not have it.

Whatever you can afford for pixel 8 and above, if possible. Those will be supported for longer.

Its good if everything you need can run from Kodi. It uses its own Linux distribution in the background, so you won’t really be able to install anything else unless you build it.

I would avoid anything built into the TV.

1. Its starting to be used for spying on you
2. The chip they come with are usually not that good unless it’s a high end TV.
3. They are building ads right into the TV themselves.

I would not connect the TV to the internet and use a external media player. Either a Nvidia shield or an Apple TV is your best bet.

You can also try building a media player yourself using a small computer.

Note - The self made media player will be more limited in terms of apps available, unfortunately, as well as streaming quality from some of the streaming services.

You can probably do some more advance tasks via CLI. Also usually lists information faster. But honestly you will be overall fine with GUI a majority of the time.

Some people just like being in the terminal.

These rumors/stories, whatever you want to call them, is all new to me, but its just a way to dehumanize a certain group and therefore helping to justify labelling them the new boogieman.

ELI5 Its a way to make a group of people appear less human and different from yourself. This makes it easier to not relate to them and use them as a bad/ evil example of something you want to avoid.

You should be fine doing what you want on Linux. Just make sure everything works before installing completely. There is a liveUSB mode that let’s you try it before you install.

Mint and PoP os are good ones to try.

Can also check out Zorin os which is pretty good too but doesn’t update as often.

Isn’t matrix more like slack that you are looking for?

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Go to the Settings -> System -> Multiple Users. Allow multiple users.

From my experience, you have to use google services for the 2fa to work on Yubikey. You can work around this by using a TOTP and storing it on the key. There is a Yubikey app that can read the tokens that doesn’t require google services. Another approach is make a separate profile that has a google account active on it and just keep those apps there to use the Yubikey on.

Some banking apps require extra work in their settings permissions to get them to work. Try turning off some of the extra security measures for app in the app permissions settings. See if that can get them to work.

Messaging is going to be broken unless both parties use an internet based messenger, like signal or iMessage. SMS is very restrictive. RCS may help fix this when it launched to iOS but it seems to break on graphene. Probably the same reason banking apps break.

Check out LocalSend. App that let you send things over local WiFi. No server required.

Mostly their marketing practices. They are designed well but mostly designed to keep you locked in one way or another.

For me, their desktop is not as intuitive as people make it seem and lacks simple shortcuts that most other desktops have.

On mobile, its the restriction of customization and options. They are getting better at customizing but still limit you on options for anything outside of their apps. They claim to be private but follow similar practices as other companies, just in a more quite way with better PR.