I don’t think that’s correct as I’ve registered a fresh account as described, during the setup phase of a phone, within the last month and no phone number was needed. I’ll give you the benefit of doubt as I don’t want to do that again just to disprove a stranger on the internet, but if anything changed it had to change in this very, very recent period.

edit: the posit of OP was to open an account in order to be able to register to other accounts, not go jasonbourne 5eyes and friends.

I ain’t got none of those and this is/was the only way you can open a gmail account without a phone number; as posited in OP, this is to be used only to register to stuff, not use it as a comms medium.

buncha folks are running linux on macbooks, but their experience will be of little use to you as T2 macbooks are hella complicated in that regard.

the wifi going away, unless it’s the published fix on t2linux (restart NetworkManager on resume via systemd), is something you need to describe in more detail.

never had/heard issues wrt trackpad, I’d have to look into that.

not waking after sleep promptly is due to softlocks on the CPU; it will wake eventually. if you’re not happy with that, there’s a short script that shuts all cores off prior to standby and reactivates them on wake; that puts the wake time to a coupla seconds.

get your old android phone, no phone # needed. install lineageos + gapps. go to some public wifi spot. register a fresh gmail account. jot the login down somewhere. reset/wipe your phone. you’re done.

I’d rather stop communicating altogether than do anything that involves interacting with shitcoins in any shape or form.

yeah, nvram GfxMode= and reboot enables it

my mistake, oneplus 6 is. was sure f1 was also there but now I see it isn’t.

the thing with halium is you have better hardware compatibility as android can use the OEM blobs, whereas you have more modern kernels, software, etc. with postmarketOS/mobian but worse hardware issues, e.g. cameras mainly.

so based on that, choose your fighter. good luck

are you looking to get a phone at this stage? then skip that one and go for a Poco F1 or Oneplus 6/6T. those run the way more powerful SDM845, have faster storage, available in 6 or 8 GB RAM, and most important, have the widest suport for other linuxes, postmarketOS and mobian, as well as UT. prices should be in the same ballpark, as all of those are close to 10 years old; if you can choose, F1 can be opened way easier for battery replacement.

those two run native mainline linux whereas UT runs on Halium (that’s like android + linux in a VM). also [email protected]

edit: haven’t answered the question - 6 GB is obv more than enough for normal use; 4 GB ain’t.

the dev vibecodes; I make a distinction between using the crap as a boilerplate helper and a full-blown agentic “hey computer, do this but do it super-good!”. not only that, they got a super-asshole vibe as they removed claude traces from the repo and then flaunted that it’s so people won’t know what parts were vibeshat. “good luck finding the cutoff point”, I’m paraphrasing here.

to each their own, but that’s a hard pass for that fork from me.

not a customer, but you’d do well to state front and center whether or to what extent this was vibeshat. same should go for every “I built” post, imo.

edit: typo

if you were looking for an excuse to torpedo this abomination, here it is. hosting this gargantuan stack just for an encrypted csv file? at least the client (electron) gobbles up RAM like it’s free while being bug-compatible with whatever chrome version was current half a year ago.

sadly, news ain’t great on the other side of the fence - keepassXC dev is all-in on vibeshitting; latest non-polluted version is 2.7.9.; works fine and the stuff they’re working on is pretty far from essential. some unknown folks forked it but who’s to say what their expertise is.

never thought I’d disable my autoupdate timers but here we are. keep your eyes open.

eOS to lineageOS is like Ubuntu to Debian; a more newb-oriented solution with some stuff preinstalled but with less choices; e.g. you can’t switch out the iOS-like launcher. if you know your way around, you’re wasting your time with eOS. but if it’s for a less technically adept user, you might be doing them a favor with eOS. the murena suite can be opted out of.

had a bunch of those. the best thing you can do is disable the nvidia graphics and run it off the intel graphics, plenty powerful for everyday tasks, lower power consumption, less heat, longer battery life. only downside, you lose display out.

after that, any linux distro will suit you just fine. go with fedora for newest and best or debian for safe and boring.

edit: https://lemmy.ml/post/42330116