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Why Linux?

Seek assistance with all types of tech. - computer, phone, TV, heating controls etc.
doolally
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Re: Why Linux?

#507982

Postby doolally » June 17th, 2022, 8:03 pm

1nvest wrote:
formoverfunction wrote:I do already, I'm running Debian via SSH (X forwarding) and Pop! in VM from the Pro.

I find (linux to linux) tigervnc's x0vncserver to be superior to X forwarding, combined with sndiod for sound forwarding. Alternatively OpenGL. With either of those I can play games, view youtubes ...etc. as the same level of quality/speed as if being run/played locally (or in my case quicker as the server is hard wired (ethernet) whilst my laptop is predominately connected via wifi).

My laptop is now somewhat dated, 4GB/2core such that a pi 4 has higher specs. Rather than buying a new laptop I am considering buying a pi instead to stick to the laptops lid as a 'server' and run the two as above. Then whenever I want to upgrade again it would be just a matter of a relatively inexpensive swap out of the pi.

Recently I built a long term supported kernel (5.10 from kernel.org), 20 minutes build time; Built the latest busybox (1.35) from busybox.net (10 mins build time) to serve as the userland; Compiled framebuffer vnc (seconds build time) to add to that ... and now have a 6MB laptop boot choice that boots in a second and can comfortably handle the pixels that it is thrown by the vnc server. A nice feature is that if the server is always on then booting back to a gui desktop is also just a second or two, and you drop back in where you last left off. Or where you can 'boot' into that server from any other device that supports vnc (many do). Whilst any files on the laptop remain secure, physically isolated, no risk of ransomware.

If the server supports kvm/qemu (virtual machines) which most will, then that can also boot any iso/image (operating system) to serve up as vnc. kvm (kernel based virtual machine) is very quick in my experience, similar if not even quicker than bare metal boots. No need for dual booting when you can have multiple systems all booted at the same time and switch between those just as easily as switching between different windows.

For set up of a shared filesystem I use ssh (sshfs), define a common pooled folder/directory that all of the booted systems mount/share. And with sndiod you just direct sounds to whatever IP/device you want, such as to the laptops headphones/speakers.

I thought I was reasonably OK with computers, but I have no idea what you are talking about. But clearly you do. Respect! :lol:
doolally

formoverfunction
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Re: Why Linux?

#508037

Postby formoverfunction » June 18th, 2022, 8:59 am

In general I find using a Pi as a "companion" a great solution with my MacBook Pro. Mac and Pi 4 make great friends.
I make lots of use of SSH, Appleshare and have moved all my chore processes over the the PI. RSS, RNS, Portfolio email, Jstock and I prefer the simplicity of mpd/mpc and beets over Music.
The MacBook is a fabulous machine for me, I love using Apple's Music Match service for example and Apple's cloud services, but for the cost of some of the stuff I might have bought from the App store I get the flexibility of open-source alternatives. I've always used Macs. App Store has financed a Pi ;)
Open a terminal and ssh the Pi and I can play my music throughout the house, check my RSS, check through RNS by scrolling InvestEgates rss feeds and I could even check the output of Jstock's gmail output, but I do that with a second client.
I try to keep my hardware for a long time, so yes a cheap little Pi helps me extended and I like the idea of using the Pi as a safe place to protect my main machine so I will often use a file on the Pi with FireJail as just another lever of protection.
I still run a virtual Linux machine on the Mac, a small system, for those jobs that Linux does best. There are plenty of them.

Infrasonic
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Re: Why Linux?

#512767

Postby Infrasonic » July 8th, 2022, 4:22 pm

https://t.co/q7kvJbq25v

Enabling Secure Boot for Linux on Lenovo Secured-core PC’s

Secure Boot is supported by many Linux distributions and is an important security feature for ensuring that your boot loader and kernel have not been tampered with.Linux distributions use a Microsoft signed ‘shim’ executable that is then able to verify the subsequent boot stages - that have been signed with the distribution key.

The Microsoft signed shim is signed using the “Microsoft 3rd Party UEFI Certificate”, and this certificate is stored in the BIOS database.Starting in 2022 for Secured-core PCs it is a Microsoft requirement for the 3rd Party Certificate to be disabled by default. This means that for any of these Lenovo platforms shipped with Windows preinstalled an extra step is needed to allow Linux to boot with secure boot enabled.

To enable secure boot to work with Linux we need to enable the “Allow Microsoft 3rdParty UEFI CA” option in the BIOS setup. Use the following steps:1.Boot into the BIOS setup menu.Reboot your PC and when the “To interrupt normal startup, press Enter” message is displayed press the F1 key2.In the BIOS menu select the “Security” option and the “Secure Boot” sub-menu.Toggle the “Allow Microsoft 3rd party UEFI CA” to be “On” as shown below.3.Press F10 to save and reboot


Might become an issue across the board with new W11 PC's...

Infrasonic
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Re: Why Linux?

#557274

Postby Infrasonic » December 26th, 2022, 7:40 am

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dpZurFVxh4c

Setting up Nextcloud and Collabora (Office) on TrueNAS SCALE
TrueNAS Official Documentation: https://www.truenas.com/docs/
TrueNAS Community: https://www.truenas.com/community/
Nextcloud Website: https://nextcloud.com/

formoverfunction
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Re: Why Linux?

#557279

Postby formoverfunction » December 26th, 2022, 10:09 am

Why Linux: Fedora and Alpine on my laptop via UTM, but music has been my main reason for 2022.

Managing a large music library with Volumio, MPD and beets io has been my revelation of 22.

As a long term iTunes/Music Apple user I find I now only use those for warehousing my tracks, but importing, matching, ripping and playing only get done with linux. I've discovered so much more flexibility and accuracy. It's a joy in comparison. I still use my Apple devices, but not when at home, then it's almost entirely linux for music.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZaqJmjM23D0&t=10s

Infrasonic
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Re: Why Linux?

#571944

Postby Infrasonic » March 1st, 2023, 10:48 am

Useful Linux tutorials resource...https://www.youtube.com/@LearnLinuxTV/videos

Infrasonic
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Re: Why Linux?

#572122

Postby Infrasonic » March 1st, 2023, 5:53 pm

Not unique to Linux but if you've ever looked at Wireshark packet analyser and thought it's way too complicated to learn easily then this YT channel is great at breaking it all down into digestible chunks..https://www.youtube.com/@ChrisGreer/videos

Infrasonic
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Re: Why Linux?

#574481

Postby Infrasonic » March 10th, 2023, 8:39 am

If you've investigated TrueNAS core (BSD) or scale (Debian Linux) you might be interested in this comprehensive ZFS 101 tutorial...https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pq3aLbjmlOI

https://www.truenas.com/truenas-core/

https://www.truenas.com/truenas-scale/

Infrasonic
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Re: Why Linux?

#574900

Postby Infrasonic » March 11th, 2023, 2:36 pm

https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linux-6.4 ... r-Dropping

Queued up ahead of the Linux 6.4 cycle this spring is removing all of the PCMCIA "char" drivers as part of a broader effort to remove PCMCIA socket and card driver code where there is no apparent users remaining....Cont


Something to be aware of if running old laptops with Linux...

Infrasonic
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Re: Why Linux?

#585384

Postby Infrasonic » April 26th, 2023, 4:43 pm

https://www.phoronix.com/news/Debian-AR ... e-Boot-Fix

While Debian and its derivatives are quite popular with ARM single board computers, the ARM64 Secure Boot support has been broken for at least two years. But a fix is on the way and it should appear for this year's Debian 12 "Bookworm" release.

Since at least May 2021, Debian's ARM64 build has featured broken Secure Boot support. In particular, this bug has taken the light in recent weeks for noting the breakage with the shim signed by Microsoft and the GRUB2 bootloader signed by Debian...
Cont.

formoverfunction
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Re: Why Linux?

#585473

Postby formoverfunction » April 27th, 2023, 6:15 am

This isn't quite Linux, but Python and cli.

I may have a look at it via Docker or try and see if it runs on VM.

But has anyone taken a look at OpenBB?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BbqvRqMbVFU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cgeN3Ep2nEw

Automated investment research packed with python financial libs and intended to prove quick investment research. You own opensource Bloomberg.

GeoffF100
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Re: Why Linux?

#585686

Postby GeoffF100 » April 27th, 2023, 7:00 pm

Infrasonic wrote:https://www.phoronix.com/news/Debian-ARM64-Secure-Boot-Fix

While Debian and its derivatives are quite popular with ARM single board computers, the ARM64 Secure Boot support has been broken for at least two years. But a fix is on the way and it should appear for this year's Debian 12 "Bookworm" release.

Since at least May 2021, Debian's ARM64 build has featured broken Secure Boot support. In particular, this bug has taken the light in recent weeks for noting the breakage with the shim signed by Microsoft and the GRUB2 bootloader signed by Debian...
Cont.

I recently had a secure boot issue. I booted Linux Mint 21 from a USB stick (which I had used previously with no problems). I had successfully booted from that stick many times before. I got:

ERROR
Verification failed: (0x1A) Security violation

https://askubuntu.com/questions/1456460 ... ing-ubuntu

What happened here is that Canonical updated their UEFI Secure Boot signing key and your system's Secure Boot Advanced Targeting variable. In plain terms, they made it so that newer boot files they release are bootable, and older ones aren't. If you got the update and then try to boot an OS that is still using the older files, it won't work and you get a Security Violation error.

The solution here is to update your installation so that you have newer boot files. In this instance, though, you're trying to install from an ISO that has the older boot files. So you can't update the boot files. You have two choices here.

Disable Secure Boot and leave it that way.
Disable Secure Boot, boot the 22.04.1 ISO, install, update, and then enable Secure Boot again.


My Gigabyte GA-H81M-DS2V motherboard does not have an option to disable secure boot. (It does have an option to enable legacy boot, which might have worked.) The link above says that Ubuntu 22.04.2 will secure boot. I did not need to reinstall, but wanted a working live USB for emergencies, so I burned Ubuntu 22.04.2 onto my USB stick. I do not know whether the Mint team has fixed this problem. The forum posts that I pulled up were either useless or said disable secure boot. I expect that Mint 21.2 will secure boot when it arrives (at the end of June, hopefully).

GeoffF100
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Re: Why Linux?

#587618

Postby GeoffF100 » May 6th, 2023, 9:42 pm

"Windows & macOS can't do this, but Linux can!":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TuPO-eAMy4I

That does answer the title of this thread pretty well.

Infrasonic
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Re: Why Linux?

#595201

Postby Infrasonic » June 14th, 2023, 4:54 pm

https://www.phoronix.com/news/Debian-12-Released

Following more than one and a half years in development, Debian 12 is officially shipping today as the latest major release for this long-maintained Linux distribution.

Over the Debian 11 stable series there is a plethora of package updates to enjoy with Debian 12. Debian 12 is powered by the Linux 6.1 LTS kernel, packages are built using the GCC 12.2 compiler, the LLVM/Clang 14 compiler is also available along with an LLVM/Clang 15 option, PHP 8.2 the default version, Rust 1.63 is available, Glibc 2.36 is in use, and a wealth of other package updates. On the desktop side, GNOME 43, KDE Plasma 5.27, Xfce 4.18, LXDE 11, and MATE 1.26 are among the desktop options.

Some of the other work in Debian 12 includes easier handling of non-free firmware thanks to its new repository and installer integration, UEFI on ARM64 support, and many other changes in keeping up with other modern Linux environments...
Cont.

Infrasonic
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Re: Why Linux?

#596114

Postby Infrasonic » June 18th, 2023, 3:35 pm

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YRaJa-VjLGE
Explaining Computers
Debian 12, known as “Bookworm”, was released on June 10th 2023. Here we take a look at this popular and important Linux distro -- including download and installation, setting up an NVIDIA GPU driver, as well as the GNOME, KDE Plasma, LXDE and Cinnamon desktops.

Chapters:
00:00 Introduction
01:01 Bookworm arrives
03:20 Installation
06:59 What’s New?
10:46 NVIDIA Driver
12:50 Desktops
16:00 A Linux Milestone

Infrasonic
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Re: Why Linux?

#600726

Postby Infrasonic » July 8th, 2023, 12:02 pm

https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linux-6.5-NTFS
Konstantin Komarov of Paragon Software has submitted the NTFS(3) file-system driver updates for the nearly-closed Linux 6.5 merge window.

This better NTFS file-system read-write driver was upstreamed back in 2021 for Linux 5.15 with the code donated by Paragon and a big improvement over the former read-focused NTFS kernel driver or that of the NTFS-3G FUSE driver. Since then there have been improvements on and off for bettering this driver...
Cont.

Infrasonic
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Re: Why Linux?

#609634

Postby Infrasonic » August 18th, 2023, 9:28 am

https://github.com/89luca89/distrobox

Use any Linux distribution inside your terminal. Enable both backward and forward compatibility with software and freedom to use whatever distribution you’re more comfortable with. Distrobox uses podman or docker to create containers using the Linux distribution of your choice. The created container will be tightly integrated with the host, allowing sharing of the HOME directory of the user, external storage, external USB devices and graphical apps (X11/Wayland), and audio.

Infrasonic
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Re: Why Linux?

#610035

Postby Infrasonic » August 20th, 2023, 2:53 pm

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1apoFXZ9ad8

Sipeed Lichee Pi 4A RISC-V SBC review and Debian demo. This is the first RISC-V computer I’ve tested that's provided a usable desktop computing experience right out of the box. End-user RISC-V is starting to arrive! :)

You can learn more about the Lichee Pi 4A on its web page here:
https://sipeed.com/licheepi4a

And the board has excellent documentation here:
https://wiki.sipeed.com/licheepi4a.html

Chapters:
00:00 Introduction
00:45 Unboxing
03:33 Specifications
07:26 First Boot
10:37 Debian Demo
18:10 Another Milestone

#RISC-V #LicheePi #Debian #explainingcomputers

Infrasonic
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Re: Why Linux?

#612029

Postby Infrasonic » August 29th, 2023, 9:21 pm

https://www.theregister.com/2023/08/29/ ... s_in_25ms/

...Replacing a sort algorithm in the FreeBSD kernel has improved its boot speed by a factor of 100 or more… and although it's aimed at a micro-VM, the gains should benefit everyone.

MicroVMs are a hot area of technology R&D in the last half decade or so. The core idea is a re-invention of some of concepts and technology that IBM invented along with the hypervisor in the 1960s: designing OSes specifically to run as guests under another OS. This means building the OS specifically to run inside a VM, and to talk to resources provided by a specific hypervisor rather than to fake hardware.

This means that the guest OS needs next to no support for real hardware, just VirtIO drivers which talk directly to facilities provided by the host hypervisor. In turn, the hypervisor doesn't have to provide an emulated PCI bus, emulated power management, emulated graphics card, emulated network interface cards, and so on. The result is that the hypervisor itself can be much smaller and simpler....
Cont.

Infrasonic
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Re: Why Linux?

#612039

Postby Infrasonic » August 29th, 2023, 10:47 pm

https://distrosea.com/

Update: 400+ versions available to try online. Internet enabled for signed in users.
Test drive Linux distros online!


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