Note that if you want actual virtualization then perhaps Proxmox (not sure if it manages multiple hypervisors - I haven't obtained something to test it on yet). Portainer is best for Docker management (it, and it's client agents, run as docker containers themselves. Don't forget to enable web sockets if proxying.

It's not the flatpak that's the issue, it's all the other stuff surrounding it that I need to contain. Much easy, potentially, if they are all in the same environment.

Thanks - this gives me a few leads.

I know that I'm not getting a full sandbox - that's ok. Ultimately I'm trying to get bottles running in the hopes of getting a semi-contained environment for me to test out yabridge and getting reaper to load the vsts without crashing. (Reaper is the easy part, the plugins not so much...)

A modicum of isolation here (even if not complete) will help me figure things out. Obviously, if I need different kernel/flags the host will get it too.

If I unshare-devsys, will that disable audio? (I'm still trying to get a clear picture of what's shared and what isn't with distrobox/podman (with docker, it feels a bit more straightforward, but I'm not sure docker would be the right choice here...)

Pfblockerng on pfsense is very powerful.

Given the ongoing cyber attack on Toronto Public Library, I really hope no one files this under 'Life Hacks'...

They are called "mondegreens". They're a ton of fun.

IBM PC, circa 1982(?)

Lol - I was parodying your comment, actually 🙂. Not sure if fingerprint is standard api, but I suspect there is some proprietary stuff going on.

In the end it's not about blaming Linux, it's about getting adoption to a critical mass where commercial entities can realize a business case to support. Then the ecosystem will thrive.

Linux (and BSD for router workload) absolutely owns the server world. Even MS let's you run SQL Server on Linux). The desktop isn't there yet wrt adoption, but it's growing. Things like fingerprint sensors are definitely in the desktop (closer to end user) world and if it's the business use case that is the area of most growth, as I suspect it is (in India, especially) then I think these sorts of modules have higher likelihood of being adopted.

Ah yes - Native Instruments. It's both HW and SW. I should have been more clear. No joy on Ubuntu - the issue is the HW driver. The HW is simply unsupported. (someone wrote a driver to partially allow midi mode on an older version of the HW, but it's completely hobbled and, I fear, makes my point more loudly than I could if it didn't exist. FWIW, only the older Native Instruments installers will run under wine - the new ones leverage certain features of windows that apparently will never be supported by wine, so I have little confidence in wine-based solutions for anything I need to depend on going forward.

Apple makes great computers, but... I can't stand them. You're in a walled proprietary garden and it drives me bonkers. I also have similar suspicions wrt their privacy practices.

Windows, for me, works well enough (I can get it to do everything I need) but I have grave concerns about privacy and a really, really don't like their AI direction. It's the opposite of what I want in a computer.

I've considered going full Linux as hypervisor with Windows as guest, but it's really not that easy to actually use beyond a theoretical proof of concept once you start managing large sound libraries.

Would like to get back to Linux as daily driver as I did years ago and actually do run it on a few old laptops. (I wish there was a better email client - the only one that seems to successfully support oauth2 is thunderbird, and it's more than a bit unwieldy for large mailboxes (especially with its circa 1997 design aesthetic...)

Anyway - I really, really want to find a way to make a leap to Linux (again) but it's currently not feasible, no matter how hard I bang my head against that particular wall...

For me, it's the lack of support for the audio HW. Infuriating.

The mars thing is really a small part of what they do, although it gets the press. They are pretty much the only real game in town for satellite launches, and, I think ISS transport (especially since Soyez is Russian and there's not a lot of good will going on there...). Even Amazon uses them for launches. It's approaching monopoly status for critical infrastructure (we're very dependant on satellites as a society now).

Mars is a labour of love for future ambition, but it's not the main show.

Whether the root cause is historically poor NASA funding or not (I think there's a strong argument for competition and private sector IF it's properly governed, but it never is...), the fact is that we've created a situation where vast amounts of geopolitical control rest with a single person.

• mostly post on Lemmy now. So check reddit occasionally as there are a few things there I have need/interest in. I rarely post there now. It's mostly because of their utterly unusable official app - if they allowed third party apps (and my choice of third party app) I'd have been willing to pay to use (I'm not looking for a free ride).
• I'm split between Mastodon, BlueSky, Threads and occasional Twitter. There are people I still interact with on each. I am not a fan of Meta, but unfortunately they seem to be winning. Mastodon is very, very clunky though it has good points. I am seeing an increasing number of big name posters expressing frustration with the platform as there is no good mechanism to ward off spam and abuse at scale - this makes sense (though I certainly am not such a person).
• What's Matrix? I use Discord only because I have to as it's the only place for support/community for certain tools I use. I hate it. I wish orgs would use old school web page support forae like they used to. Vastly better...
• YT premium. Gotta follow the content. I don't mind paying to rid myself of ad interruption, and what's more, it makes it functional for my kids (sans ads). Besides, YouTube Music is pretty good (not nearly as good as Google Play Music was, though).

I think as things scale people may start to appreciate just how hard it is to moderate content to a useful degree. Not too much. Not too little. (I'm not suggesting that any of the main sites has really gotten it right, but when it's gone (at scale) things go bad fast (RIP Twitter).

I hope for better interoperability between platform (fedi) but it's likely a pipe dream.