You change how frequently checks are performed. Traccar runs a simple every X seconds pattern. Default is 5 minutes. On 5 minute pings I see a 15-20% drain over the course of 24 hours, which seems reasonable, given that I'm on GrapheneOS and not leveraging Google's location tracking simplifications. If you're not on GrapheneOS your battery usage for location tracking will probably be better. Just not private.
I should note that my scenario was exactly the same. I wanted to share location with family. Additionally, Traccar supports temporary location share links for friends if you'd like. You'll need to self-host it- I personally set up the Traccar server inside kubernetes and used Traefik for reverse proxy and SSL, but this is not necessary.
I started out with Owntracks. I found it to be unreasonably complex. I swapped to Traccar. It was much easier to get functional.
I'll believe it when I see it- Spotify lossless was announced years ago. I don't believe them.
I like AirVPN, my main issue is server stability. iVPN and Mullvad at least were able to maintain a connection continuously for weeks on end across various networks, but this is not the case for AirVPN. It's to the point where I'm considering alternatives because I'll start using my device only to find out the VPN tunnel has died and I have to manually reconnect it.
They no longer offer this, right?
NixOS docs themselves are a tad lax, but it will get better.
Learning nix itself is also important:
Just this morning I was having issues with a wacky dual-boot install with NixOS and Windows sharing an EFI partition, and quite interestingly ChatGPT and I were able to troubleshoot the process and get it resolved in under half and hour. I was really impressed by the specific configurations it was giving me for my /etc/nixos/configuration.nix , so that is also another resource you may consider leaning on when you run into walls in other documentation sources.
I can't give too much specifics due to IP and company infosec but was having issues with network drives
I'm required to use CentOS for work and it would be an understatement to say how frustrating it is to use for me. So many packages are missing / old, and some packages just break. There have also been wild bugs which just kernel panic the whole OS. I'd steer clear.
If you're on Kinoite, can't you just enable Plasma 6 if you really need it?
https://tim.siosm.fr/blog/2023/11/22/kinoite-plasma-6/
Otherwise:
https://community.kde.org/Plasma/Plasma_6#How_to_use/test_it
Is syncthing falling out of favor these days?
Do we prefer Ansible over Terraform?