After being an iPhone user for the last seven years, in 2026 I pulled the trigger and bought a Google Pixel 10a to finally try GrapheneOS and double-check for myself: do I really need a flagship smartphone? In this post I will share how the transition from iOS to GrapheneOS and from a flagship iPhone to a mid-range Pixel went. If you are here only to see a software experience - what worked, what didn’t, and which Android replacements I chose for iOS apps and services (including iCloud services...

Signal for Linux officially supports only 64-bit, Debian-based Linux distributions, for example, Ubuntu. There are unofficial, community-maintained COPR repositories and a Flatpak, but it doesn’t feel right because you have to trust a third party. Luckily, distrobox makes installation of Ubuntu packages on Fedora dead simple. So here is how you install an official build of Signal Desktop on Fedora.  Install distrobox sudo dnf install distrobox Create a container called “signal-ubuntu” and ...

I started writing this note on April 20th, a date when a "false spring" in Finland should already be mostly over and a comeback of winter is unlikely (not impossible, though). When I decided to buy a Mazda MX-5, also known as a Miata, in 2025, one of my concerns was a soft top versus the Finnish winter. While I did my search on the internet, I usually either saw posts from people using their Miatas as a second car for occasional winter events or posts from people who live in climate zones wher...

Oleg from the future (2026-09-06): This post is outdated. I am keeping it nevertheless as a record of my experience with Retroid Pocket Classic, but all you really need to know is that I sold Retroid Pocket Classic and Retroid Pocket Mini v2 in August 2026, and I've kept Anbernic RG ARC-S and still play Genesis and arcade fighting games on it. I collected a Retroid Pocket Classic (RPC) in the Classic 6 variant from the post office a month ago. The next day, I went on a business trip, took it ...