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.

  • CypherColt@sh.itjust.works
    0·
    5 days ago

    One I’m using a lot is a self hosted password manager. Vaultwarden specifically. Useful for more than just passwords of course, can take secure notes as well. I keep it locked to my local network only, and need to VPN in to my home network when I’m out to access it.

  • utopiah@lemmy.ml
    0·
    6 days ago

    So… I’ve done that May 2023 for a holiday trip.

    I left with my RPi4 and few gadgets but no Internet.

    There I built https://git.benetou.fr/utopiah/offline-octopus/ and my main take away is

    • you can build what is missing

    and more importantly the meta take away is

    • you need to iterate preparations

    because just like first aid you need to be actually ready when needed and knowledge change over time. You need to actually try though, test your setup and yourself genuinely otherwise it is intellectual masturbation.

    Have fun!

  • daniskarma@lemmy.dbzer0.com
    0·
    6 days ago

    You can download a collection of thousands (maybe a million I don’t even know) of books in Spanish in epub format, from the “secret library”. It’s like a 100Gb torrent, but way worth it.

    Ebooks tens to have long lasting battery. I spent a few hours reading on monday.

    Just now I’m on my phone, but if you are interested let me know and I’ll try to find the link and will mp it to you if you want.

    And just now I’ve been thinking that epubs being so small size maybe there’s a way to transmit them over this radio mesh networks on demand, like some sort of radio library. I’ve have to look into that. Maybe they are too big for that as radio bandwidth for data transfer tends to be incredibly small.

    • 6R1M R34P3R@lemmy.mlOPEnglish
      0·
      6 days ago

      i’d love to have those if you don’t mind, is it ok for you to send over here? otherwise you have my contact info on my profile. Thanks for the info and is a very good idea indeed

  • qjkxbmwvz@startrek.website
    0·
    6 days ago

    You mentioned ham radio — definitely fun! It’s a process to get into it though, as you need to study/pass an exam, and then you need a radio. Radios range from cheap ($25 or so) in the VHF/UHF (“walkie talkie”-style) to more expensive for an HF rig ($1000 range for 100W HF). If you want to get into low power (“QRP”) it can beuch cheaper. You also need a fair amount of space for a good antenna setup…

    There are tons of different communication modes, some without a computer and, like you mentioned, some that use computers. wsjtx and fldigi are popular programs.

    Good luck!

  • nanook@friendica.eskimo.com
    0·
    6 days ago

    If you can get a few hundred watts of electrical power, StarLink is an option for broadband connectivity via satellite when all the local communications are down. Don’t know why, but Star Link reminds me of Sky Net.

    • 6R1M R34P3R@lemmy.mlOPEnglish
      0·
      6 days ago

      sorry, but I’m not willing to pay to that asshole many people here have already generators, solar panels etc and that worked ok here

      • daniskarma@lemmy.dbzer0.com
        0·
        6 days ago

        Just in case you ever met someone who lives in a place with no cable internet (strange case in Spain as we have great coverage). Just let them know that in Spain they fund satellite internet that is not owned by elon musk. Is slower but way cheaper specially because the government funds a part of it afaik.

  • TCB13@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    6 days ago

    This is going to be controversial but…

    Linux is not really suited for the post-apocalitic no-internet world, the way the repositories are built and software is packed (almost nothing is static, a lot of dependencies on other packages everywhere) just makes it really impractical and hard to deal with those scenarios. Flatpak / containers and friends even make this situation worse because you can’t easily mirror the repositories and there’s no straightforward way of exporting a Flatpak as a solid file that can be shared around and installed everywhere - the current tool for that doesn’t account architectures and dependencies very well.

    Windows however is a much more solid and good option, yes, it’s painful to hear this but in Windows you can get an exe from a friend in a flash drive and it runs as is. Same goes for installers, reinstalling the OS etc. There’s only a couple of .net framework installers that will cover dependencies for 99.99% of stuff in a few MB. The same goes for macOS, however it depends on a lot of software signing nowadays and certificates that can expire and you then have a problem.

    • MNByChoice@midwest.social
      0·
      6 days ago

      Offline repository caches for Linux have been a thing for decades. People absolutely pass binaries to friends.

      Flatpac may not be suitable, but that is only one way to get software on Linux.

      • TCB13@lemmy.worldEnglish
        0·
        6 days ago

        I’m not saying it is impossible, I’m just saying you need a deal with a bunch of complexities that in the post-apocalyptic wont be pretty.

    • 6R1M R34P3R@lemmy.mlOPEnglish
      0·
      6 days ago

      might be true, i won’t discuss that. But im willing to have alternatives, have my own mirrors etc whatever is needed

      what I’m not willing to use is propietary software so more than controversial, you are just not being helpfull

      • TCB13@lemmy.worldEnglish
        0·
        6 days ago

        you are just not being helpfull

        I am. When “shit hits the fan” you want to be as compatible and and frictionless as possible, because at point having a running computer will be a feat on its own and you probably won’t have time/power to deal with software complexities and “ways around issues”. You most likely want to boot a machine from whatever parts are available and get some data out of it or maybe in and move on to hunting or farming. No time to be there fixing xyz package with broken dependencies and whatnot. If someone gives you a flash drive with data it follows the same logic, you want to get to something as quickly as possible.

        In Linux there’s also an over-reliance on web-based solutions that can be self-hosted in your system or a 3rd one but that, once again, just adds extra friction that you don’t have with “simple” formats and binaries like pdf, docx and others that at the end of the day are just self contained apps that can be run as is without extra fuzz nor cloud dependencies.

        I’m all for Linux, alternative and open-source, but in the situation described you last concern is if you’re running proprietary stuff.

    • balsoft@lemmy.ml
      0·
      6 days ago

      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.

      • TCB13@lemmy.worldEnglish
        0·
        6 days 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. 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.

        • atzanteol@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
          0·
          6 days 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.

        • Variants of Concern@lemmy.oneEnglish
          0·
          6 days 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.

        • 6R1M R34P3R@lemmy.mlOPEnglish
          0·
          6 days ago

          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

          • TCB13@lemmy.worldEnglish
            0·
            6 days ago

            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.

            • 6R1M R34P3R@lemmy.mlOPEnglish
              0·
              6 days ago

              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)

              • TCB13@lemmy.worldEnglish
                0·
                6 days 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.

        • balsoft@lemmy.ml
          0·
          6 days 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.

  • adry@piefed.socialEnglish
    0·
    6 days ago

    Spain? check guifi.net ;)

    People had LAN Partys playing video games “offline” in the 90s… Setting up a network is easy, the difficulty comes from scaling up to many nodes, and spreading through the geography (e.g. if you were to use antennas for WLAN, they would need a mostly unobstructed vision) which in urban areas gets tricky.

    But those “topology” issues can be flattened, e.g. you can always have a raspberry pi (or any device) acting as server in the corner of a neighborhood. A virtual bulletin board, emails, etc. all could be self-hosted locally there and then people could go grab a coffee and consume the local news just like in the middle ages, but with a screen, digital assets and some healthy amount of trolling :P

  • tasankovasara@sopuli.xyz
    0·
    6 days ago

    I have my homeserver rsync three Arch mirrors and three Arch ARM mirrors in rotation on three days every week. Thus I have full local repos for these. All my machines are configured to use this local repo. The reason I do this is precisely to be prepared for the inevitable ‘Internet is broken’ scenario.

  • Zenlix@lemm.ee
    0·
    6 days ago

    Downloading all of wikipedia for one language is abiut 90GB. Inhave it on a spare drive in case of an outage. That way if I need to research something I can still do.

  • CarrotsHaveEars@lemmy.ml
    0·
    6 days ago

    A piece of software always runs locally. It is in some cases those who needs to communicate with the server fail to deliver the usual function you expect when offline.

    Please do not confuse one to another.

    And perhaps you can start by complaining which services you are using heavily rely on the server side? General questions attract general answers and IMHO you are better off just search on the internet.

    • 6R1M R34P3R@lemmy.mlOPEnglish
      0·
      6 days ago

      I am aware of this, but neither is English my primary language (so I wasn’t able of properly stating that) neither im asking for specific type of software, as you say this is indeed a general question asking for general software, I said to share whatever you like and use, as long as it can be of any use when there is a power outage. I don’t need any specifics. And I plan to share the responses to other people in fediverse of Spain that may need it here.