this post was submitted on 30 Apr 2025

57 points (92.5% liked)

Linux

53682 readers

1670 users here now

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

Rules

Posts must be relevant to operating systems running the Linux kernel. GNU/Linux or otherwise.
No misinformation
No NSFW content
No hate speech, bigotry, etc

Related Communities

Community icon by Alpár-Etele Méder, licensed under CC BY 3.0

founded 6 years ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

Selfhost offline software (lemmy.ml)

submitted 17 hours ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

69 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Recently in Spain we have suffered a complete power outage, with no electricity for a long time. Some were able to have power on their computers with generators, solar panels, etc. And I know you can have data connectivity with SDR or HAM radio. But my question here is, what are some good self-host/local offline software that we can have and use for when something like this happens. I know kiwix, and some other for manuals. Please feel free to share the ones you know and love, can be for any type of thing as long as it works completely offline, just name it. Of course for GNU/Linux (using Arch myself BTW). Thanks in advance.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 17 points 15 hours ago (2 children)

There are ways to deal with this. There's AppImage for GUI apps (that replicates the "just get an exe from a friend on a flash drive") and lots of bundling programs for non-GUI apps (I use nix-bundle because I use Nix, but there are other options too).

Lots of distro installers work offline too, by just bringing all the stuff you need as part of the installer.

And one major benefit of Linux is that when stuff does inevitably go wrong, it's infinitely easier to fix than proprietary garbage.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 hours ago

(one advantage of Flatpaks over AppImage is Flatpaks bundle their libraries – most AppImages won’t run on musl libc systems)

[–] [email protected] -3 points 13 hours ago (4 children)

AppImage suffers from the same problem that Flatpak does, the tool do work offline aren't really good/solid and won't save you for sure. It also requires a bunch of very small details to all align and be correct for things to work out.

Imagine the post-apocalyptic scenario, if you're missing a dependency to get something running, or a driver, or something specific of your architecture that wasn't deployed by the friend alongside the AppImage / Flatpak (ie. GPU driver) you're cooked. Meanwhile on Windows it has basic GPU drivers for the entire OS bakes in, or you can probably fish around for an installer as fix the problem. It is way more likely that you'll find machines with Windows and windows drivers / installer than Linux ones with your very specific hardware configuration.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 11 hours ago

Meanwhile on Windows it has basic GPU drivers for the entire OS bakes in,

Wut? Linux bundles drivers for tons of things out-of-the-box literally built as part of the kernel and many distros (e.g. Pop_OS) even provide NVidia drivers out-of-the-box as well.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 13 hours ago* (last edited 13 hours ago)

AppImage suffers from the same problem that Flatpak does, the tool do work offline aren’t really good/solid and won’t save you for sure

I've been using my laptop in areas without internet for days. It works fine.

It also requires a bunch of very small details to all align and be correct for things to work out.

I have appimage-run from nixpkgs installed, which handles all those details. They are also not too hard to figure out manually should you need to.

Imagine the post-apocalyptic scenario, if you’re missing a dependency to get something running, or a driver, or something specific of your architecture that wasn’t deployed by the friend alongside the AppImage / Flatpak (ie. GPU driver) you’re cooked.

GPU drivers are emphatically not part of the AppImage. They are provided by Mesa, which is almost guaranteed to be installed.

Meanwhile on Windows it has basic GPU drivers for the entire OS bakes in, or you can probably fish around for an installer as fix the problem

It's actually the other way around - if you want your GPU to work properly on a new Windows install, you have to fish around for AMD/NVidia drivers. On Linux Mesa is pretty much pre-installed on all distros.

It is way more likely that you’ll find machines with Windows and windows drivers / installer than Linux ones with your very specific hardware configuration.

LMAO, try moving a windows installation from Ryzen+AMD GPU to Intel+NVidia GPU and let me know how it goes (hint: you will have to manually uninstall, and then install a shit ton of drivers, for which you will need internet).

Meanwhile I'm typing this from a (Ryzen+AMD GPU) desktop which has an SSD from my (Intel+integrated graphics) laptop. When I plugged it in, it booted into sway just fine, with complete GPU support and all, and the only reason I had to update my config is to make it more convenient to use on the desktop.

Linux is not the best "apocalypse" OS, but it sure is better than Windows.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 12 hours ago

That's why similar to windows you would need to be prepared beforehand, I have a thumbtick with my portable appimages so when I setup new computers I can open my notes etc without internet.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 13 hours ago* (last edited 13 hours ago) (2 children)

Meanwhile on Windows it has basic GPU drivers for the entire OS bakes in

this is not true, in fact, most of the machines I have here won't work with a Windows installer .iso or Windows OS itself and some of my hw don't even have drivers for it. So yeah no

meanwhile, most GNU/Linux .iso distro installers have drivers already on the .iso itself, including propietary ones

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 hours ago

(one of the older tropes in Linux-land is giving new life to old hardware just by replacing Windows with Linux)

[–] [email protected] -4 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

Did you ever see any fresh install of Windows not be able to display at least 800x600 on any GPU? You didn't. It works to the minimum, want more, sure grab an msi and install the drivers.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

why do that when I have the proper drivers already on my usual GNU/Linux distro of choice? and can even use as live environment, don't even need to install (in Windows this is not easy to do)

[–] [email protected] -3 points 11 hours ago

and can even use as live environment, don’t even need to install (in Windows this is not easy to do)

Not true, Rufus creates bootable and persistent USB flash drives with one checkbox. You can do it manually also.

I was trying to illustrate a point, you may have your distro, your packages and what think you need, but if we're talking about post-apocalyptic you'll probably need other stuff and at that point you have windows computers and windows software installed or installers available pretty much everywhere starting with your next door neighbor and with Linux not so much.