@arraybolt3@theres.life avatar

arraybolt3

@arraybolt3@theres.life

👋 I'm a Christian computer programmer and Linux enthusiast. I love Bible studies, religious debate and discussion, and Christian music. I'm currently a Lubuntu Developer and Ubuntu Member, I maintain SWORD, Xiphos, and BibleTime for Fedora Linux, and I sometimes help with the development of theWord Bible Software.

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smochi, to linux
@smochi@sakurajima.moe avatar

Looking for recommendations on beginner-friendly distributions.

I don't need any novice help, this is for a friend who wants to move away from Windows.

They need the usual productivity software, web browser, mail, Word, Excel, etc. which will probably be easy to replace. I advised them to start working with now, to see if they feel comfortable with it. They also need some more exotic software, but I'm confident it will work fine with Wine. We'll test that out soon.
They're also very privacy-sensitive, so I'm currently discounting .

What would you suggest and why?

arraybolt3,
@arraybolt3@theres.life avatar

@smochi Maybe try an Ubuntu flavor like Kubuntu or Lubuntu? Those won't have the device info telemetry that Ubuntu Desktop has. It still will have crash reporting, but AFAIK we don't use crash reporting for anything other than fixing crash-causing bugs, and oftentimes crash reporting is very useful for that sort of thing.

If even crash reporting is too far, I had a decent experience with Fedora Workstation in the past, and it was quite beginner-friendly. It does require some hassle to get codecs working via RPMFusion, but once that's done it's pretty slick.

smallcircles, to foss
@smallcircles@social.coop avatar

Saddening me time and again is seeing individualism and fragmentation in #FOSS.

#Collaboration between projects that's so often low-hanging fruit, yet never happens. More anticipation of needs, helping each other, be stronger together. Yet it hardly shapes up to the extent that it could.

We seem to lack time to become sustainable, let alone 'win' from #Hypercapitalism. No time to seek collab as we prod on alone.

There are exceptions of course, and better collab tools are becoming available.

arraybolt3,
@arraybolt3@theres.life avatar

@smallcircles Part of the problem is that there are some projects that are somewhat hostile to collaboration or at least seem to be. I've seen contributors get disenchanted with projects and been all but kicked out of a project myself in the past while actively trying to collaborate as best I could. It left hurt feelings, but naturally I don't really have much against them, it's their project. It does mean that my efforts are more focused on other projects though.

popey, to ubuntu
@popey@mastodon.social avatar

I made Quicktest, a script to automate testing of Linux distro releases.

It spins up the OS of your choice in a VM and then runs a set of steps to inject keypresses into the VM so that it can run the tests.

If successful, you get a little timelapse of screenshots and a log of what happened.

It can run in a window, or headless in the background. It takes about 7 mins to do an install of #Ubuntu

There's an asciinema and timelapse linked in the README.md below ⬇️

https://github.com/quickemu-project/quicktest

arraybolt3,
@arraybolt3@theres.life avatar

@popey YESSSSSS! I've been wanting to do something like this since SUSE's openQA is just so confusing and hard to set up. I may go ahead and set up a "server" that runs this automatically for me so we can automatically test Ubuntu's images in a CI-like manner.

vanillaos, to linux Italian
@vanillaos@fosstodon.org avatar

A reminder that Vanilla OS, @pop_os_official , @elementary and many others, doesn’t impose snaps and still allows you to install your Deb files 😉

arraybolt3,
@arraybolt3@theres.life avatar

@vanillaos @pop_os_official @elementary Ubuntu doesn't impose snaps either, and the fact that the app store currently doesn't let you install them graphically is the result of a bug caused because we ran out of time after having to deal with a literal cyberattack against us (xz-utils) and trying to keep 32-bit ARM hardware alive.

I'm frustrated enough to see people constantly spouting how this is another Snap-pushing move from Canonical when it was caused because we literally ran out of time after dealing with one of the most difficult development cycles in Ubuntu's history, but to see it coming from a fellow distro is a new level of awful I didn't expect. Maybe take the time to get to know the developers you bash before bashing them because it's the popular thing to do.

arraybolt3,
@arraybolt3@theres.life avatar

@vanillaos @pop_os_official @elementary The apt packages that install Snaps are there for reasons that have nothing to do with forcing people to use the Snaps. They're there for two reasons:

  • It makes upgrades go smoothly if you're using the Canonical-supported Firefox (and now also Thunderbird) packages. These are safer to maintain as Snaps and it's my understanding that Mozilla actually asked Canonical to Snap-ify Firefox.
  • If you don't have the bridge deb packages, you get really, really interesting bugs like this one: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/kubuntu-meta/+bug/2060898

It is well-known that the Snaps don't work for everyone and that some people want to go an alternate route, and for those people the Mozilla Team PPA is provided, maintained by highly trusted members of the community, so people can fall back to using true deb packages instead. The Snaps are not imposed, they are simply the default and some of the machinery necessary to make that default work without causing armageddon has been mistaken for trying to force people to use things they don't want. It is less than ideal, but it's not the evil it's made out to be AFAICT.

(FWIW I am not a Canonical employee. I am a volunteer Ubuntu Developer though.)

(edit: fixed some impressively bad grammar, it's past 1 AM here and I'm tired)

RL_Dane, to ubuntu
@RL_Dane@fosstodon.org avatar

The fact that #ubuntu dot com has a tracker permission popup tells you everything you need to know about the moral nadir of that organization. 😢

arraybolt3,
@arraybolt3@theres.life avatar

@RL_Dane Have you ever actually used telemetry? Once you've been on the collecting end of it, it's way less scary than the average person tends to believe after reading about Google's latest privacy-violating antics. The fact that some companies do analytics in ways that are invasive doesn't mean everyone does. Even people who use Google Analytics oftentimes use it in privacy-respecting ways (both of the places I've seen it used did).

RL_Dane, to ascii
@RL_Dane@fosstodon.org avatar

Wait a minute…
What if you converted every three digits of Pi to a 10-bit number, concatenated them and interpreted them as (or something like

That means that Pi is hiding the U.S.' nuclear launch codes. The truth behind the JFK assassination, the cure to cancer…

GUYS... we were learning ' in middle school as ! It was all hiding under our noses all along!

arraybolt3,
@arraybolt3@theres.life avatar

@RL_Dane ...what? (I know this is 99.5% certain to be satire :P)

arraybolt3, to linux
@arraybolt3@theres.life avatar

Traditional swapfiles are:

  • Slow
  • Old
  • Sometimes dangerous (a pre-release Linux kernel bug once turned them into filesystem destroyers for a short time)
  • A security risk if you don't use full disk encryption
  • An SSD wear-and-tear causer if you regularly exceed your RAM limits with intensive work
  • Have much better alternatives under Linux (namely zram and (if you use FDE) zswap)

I'm thinking of making an article called "Swap space considered harmful". Anyone interested?

#linux #computers #debian #ubuntu #fedora #arch

vwbusguy, to python
@vwbusguy@mastodon.online avatar

How often I've seen this:

Major Python thing: We moved some imports from X to Y. All you need to do is update that import ref.

Various interdependent #python libraries: Broken for years

arraybolt3,
@arraybolt3@theres.life avatar

@vwbusguy This is why I refuse to code anything except tiny, simple (and oftentimes single-use) utilities in Python.

RL_Dane, to random
@RL_Dane@fosstodon.org avatar

KDE Plasma application dashboard... are you ok, bro?

arraybolt3,
@arraybolt3@theres.life avatar

@RL_Dane "My computer won't restart!" "Ah, but you didn't say to restart, you said to rⓔs𝕥𝓐𝔯t. Very different."

vwbusguy, to fedora
@vwbusguy@mastodon.online avatar

Idea for a potential #Fedora #Linux SIG. A #retrocomputing SIG where we focus on providing support for things like BASIC, COBOL, FORTRAN languages and common serial connection tools/settings out of box, as well as FOSS cartridge/ROM reader support.

arraybolt3,
@arraybolt3@theres.life avatar

@vwbusguy I don't particularly like the cartridge/ROM reader stuff as it sort of conflates retrocomputing with retrogaming, which IMO are two different fields (one with potentially very practical use, the other with very limited use and that is very likely to lead to piracy of content or other violations of laws). Stuff about supporting old programming languages, enabling running old operating systems, etc., though, sounds neat. I personally love trying to get ancient hardware to work with modern software, and have pulled it off successfully a few times.

linuxuserspace, to bot
@linuxuserspace@mastodon.social avatar

Gonna go with "nah" on this one

#bot

arraybolt3,
@arraybolt3@theres.life avatar

@linuxuserspace UUID wants to know your location

vwbusguy, to linux
@vwbusguy@mastodon.online avatar

Congrats to Simon Elmir of Stanford for getting the special signed floppy of 1.1.0!

arraybolt3,
@arraybolt3@theres.life avatar

@vwbusguy @yianiris I have some ancient hardware here that I was able to resurrect pretty decently with Debian and Arch Linux 32 (the latter was a nightmare of broken packaging sadly). Shame that Debian is discontinuing the i586 kernel though. I'm not sure what distro I'll use for the next project of this type, maybe I'll end up just building my own.

arraybolt3, to Bash
@arraybolt3@theres.life avatar

Need help ASAP with finding a text editor for Bash.

So far all of the following text editors are unable to properly syntax highlight Bash herestrings:

  • Vim
  • Neovim
  • Nano
  • Kate
  • IntelliJ IDEA
  • Visual Studio Code

I'm at a loss. Even Vim isn't up to the task. I don't have the time or brainpower right now to learn Emacs. If anyone knows a text editor that can highlight Bash herestrings right, please ping me!

arraybolt3, to linux
@arraybolt3@theres.life avatar

Turns out if you start KDE Plasma in Arabic, the entire user interface flips horizontally (presumably to work better with right-to-left text).

This is blowing my mind. 🤯

#linux #ubuntu #kde #plasma #arabic #localization

arraybolt3, to python
@arraybolt3@theres.life avatar

This is why I hate Python.

#python

selea, to linux

Help me decide what distro to use on my Garage PC.
I'll use it to program chips, mostly ESP32,ESP8266 and similar. Also listen in on radio traffic with an RTL-SDR.

I am defaulting to Debian on this one, if you does not try to convince me to try something else

#linux #askfediverse #askfedi

arraybolt3,
@arraybolt3@theres.life avatar

@selea Lubuntu, Ubuntu has better support for hardware in my experience, and Lubuntu is quite lightweight, looks nice, is fully functional, and ought to run just fine on something like that (looks like a tiny Dell Optiplex?).

itsfoss, (edited ) to linux
@itsfoss@mastodon.social avatar

Let's discuss below 🙂

Follow us to become a better Linux user! 🐧

#linux

arraybolt3,
@arraybolt3@theres.life avatar

@itsfoss If the name ends in "Server", probably don't use it as a desktop. Ubuntu Server, Fedora Server, etc. Server distros are NOT just minimal distros, they're server-oriented. If you want a minimal base to build from, look for a netinstaller or bootstrapping utility.

itsfoss, (edited ) to linux
@itsfoss@mastodon.social avatar

Whichever one it is, don't start the great editor wars in the comments! 😛

#linux

arraybolt3,
@arraybolt3@theres.life avatar

@itsfoss A mixture of Kate, Vim, and Qt Creator. Vim is my favorite of the three, but it can be a bit cumbersome trying to copy between separate instances in certain cases. Kate works well in those edge cases (and for times when a GUI is handy). Qt Creator is amazing though IMO, good enough that I can stand living without Vim if I'm writing Qt code.

fsf, to random
@fsf@hostux.social avatar

With recent news that Broadcom is "strong arming users onto subscriptions," we thought it would be a good time to remind folks of QEMU generic machine emulator and virtualizer. Read more: https://directory.fsf.org/wiki/QEMU #QEMU #VM #VirtualMachine #GNU

arraybolt3,
@arraybolt3@theres.life avatar

@fsf I've not heard this news, care to share a link?

(btw, I use QEMU on an almost daily basis and love it, very thankful that we have high-quality and fairly easy-to-use FOSS virtualization and emulation software.)

teamtuck, to NixOS

Got #nixos installed on a VM and installed some apps. Pretty easy to do. If you could get this to import your Neovim dot files and restore some Steam games from a local NAS, that would be pretty awesome in case something happens to your PC!

#linux

arraybolt3,
@arraybolt3@theres.life avatar

@teamtuck I keep wanting to try NixOS, it just seems so cool. But Ubuntu just works well enough for me, and I have too much work to do, so...

kde, to wallpapers
@kde@floss.social avatar

One of these 6 beauties will become the wallpaper for Plasma 6. Which one do you prefer?

#Plasma6 #wallpaper #desktop

@kde

Want to contribute to KDE? Become a Supporting Member:

https://kde.org/fundraisers/plasma6member/

Or donate to our community:

https://kde.org/community/donations/

arraybolt3,
@arraybolt3@theres.life avatar

@kde @kde I think the hexworld one is my favorite. The middle-left one in this collage.

arraybolt3, to random
@arraybolt3@theres.life avatar

Sometimes I really just hate email. Gmail has decided that it doesn't like something in the .tar.gz Debian source package tree I'm trying to attach to a bug report, and so it won't let me send it as a file attachment. (The fact that Debian's bug tracker works via email isn't helping things any here but it's not directly their fault.)

Sigh. Thankfully GitHub exists so I don't have to resort to using (shudder) Google Drive.

arraybolt3, to opensource
@arraybolt3@theres.life avatar

If you're writing open-source software, please do yourself and other software developers a favor and familiarize yourself with how software licensing works. As an Ubuntu Developer, much of my work involves auditing the source code licensing of various applications. Most of these applications have miserably complicated licensing situations, sometimes with licensing violations involved. I also occasionally run into licensing or copyright terms that an author probably didn't intend to specify, but that they did specify unambiguously nonetheless.

For instance, did you know that if you state that a file is "under the GPL license" without specifying what version, that means that the user of your file can use it under any version of the GPL they want to? Look at GPLv1 Section 7, GPLv2 Section 9, and GPLv3 Section 14 if you don't believe me. I found a file written in 2017 with these licensing terms. Did the author mean to do this? Probably not, they probably wanted to use GPLv3 (or maybe GPLv2). But since they didn't specify a version, I'm within my legal right to use this code under GPLv1's terms if I care to. I'm not going to do that since I have no interest in using this file for anything, but it goes to show you how a slip-up in your licensing specification can cause people to have rights or be free of restrictions you didn't want to give them or let them be free from.

Another (very very common) slip-up is for most of the source code in a repository to have license headers specifying GPLv2 or later, but with no repository-wide license specified in an AUTHORS or README file, and with a GPLv2 license in a LICENSE or COPYING file. What you probably think this does is license your program under GPLv2 or later, but what it actually does is give you a messy mixed-licensing situation with some files licensed GPLv2 only and some files licensed GPLv2 or later. Why? Because the default repository-wide license is GPLv2 as set by the LICENSE or COPYING file, and all of the headers that specify GPLv2 or later are overriding that default license.

You may think, "Why can't someone just infer that because most of the files are GPLv2 or later, that all of them are?" Great question! There's two answers. One, if you unambiguously specify something you didn't mean to specify, whatever you specified is what's legally binding. There's not room for "well that's what I said, but what I meant was..." in licensing. Secondly, many projects actually use multiple licenses in one project (for instance you'll have GPL, BSD-2-Clause, BSD-3-Clause, and MIT licenses all in one application). So how does one know if you just "accidentally" specified the wrong license, or if you meant to make a mixed-license application? They can't determine your intent with 100% certainty, so they have to obey what you said, not what you meant to say.

I am not a lawyer and this is not legal advice. This is just advice on how to help keep software developers from having headaches and problems reusing code.

#opensource #software #licensing #linux #gpl #bsdlicense #mitlicense #bsd #mit #foss

arraybolt3, to Bash
@arraybolt3@theres.life avatar

A #bash tip I find useful:

If you start a program in a terminal (usually a graphical one), you can "detach" it from the terminal, allowing you to close the terminal while leaving the application running. To do this, press Ctrl+Z in the terminal after starting the application, then run bg to background it, then disown to detach it. Then you can close the terminal or run exit and the application will keep running.

If you haven't launched the program yet, you can do this in one go with program & disown - the program will start, and you can close the terminal without also closing the program.

#linux #terminal #cli

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