TCB13

TCB13, 1 year ago (edited 11 months ago)

Debian is a great desktop distro if you get your software using Flatpak, as anyone should be doing in every distro.

TCB13, 1 year ago

It’s usually “it’s good enough for us, so that’s where we’ll leave it”, and they end up with these weird solutions that only they use.

Exactly. And to make things even worse then you’ve people upstream (Debian) or sidestream (other distros) that eventually decide to implement whatever they did but properly and then they go there, pick it and replace their original implementation.

TCB13, 1 year ago

Nothing at all, the main issue is that with graphical applications developers have an hard time to package things for all the useless distros out there and some other distros like Debian on stable will only haver older versions of software. Flatpak solves both of this issues.

TCB13, 1 year ago

Kinda related: what if I install something like Debian/Ubuntu on it? Can I still use the NAS hardware in the same way?

And that’s what you should do because those NAS specific software is more overhead than solution. You can setup the entire thing manually use less resources and have it better. BTRFS is a good solution when it comes do a simple RAID.

To be fair for a basic NAS what you need is Samba 4 for shares and something like FileBrowser for a WebUI. Another suggestion I’ve for you is to really go Debian and use LXD/Incus to create containers and virtual machines if required. I’ve posted about it here.

TCB13, 1 year ago

Well, I’m not sure you read the other comments but there is confirmation that for clients there isn’t an order for DNS servers from RFC2182:

The distinction between primary and secondary servers is relevant only to the servers for the zone concerned, to the rest of the DNS there are simply multiple servers.

All are treated equally at first instance, even by the parent server that delegates the zone. Resolvers often measure the performance of the various servers, choose the “best”, for some definition of best, and prefer that one for most queries.

TCB13, 1 year ago (edited 11 months ago)

Armbian has sane defaults for SBCs as well (yes log2ram so you won’t burn SD cards) and it is way more stable and polished than DietPi with less overhead. About bare Debian, you’ve the images I linked to and you can make it log to the ram with a simple line in systemd’s config.

Storage= Controls where to store journal data. One of “volatile” (…) If “volatile”, journal log data will be stored only in memory, i.e. below the /run/log/journal hierarchy (which is created if needed).

TCB13, 1 year ago

Proxmox is questionable nowadays, you should try LXD/Incus instead. Read more here: lemmy.world/comment/6507871

TCB13, 1 year ago

Yeah I get your thing with LXD and Canonical. I’ve been moving a ton of clusters to Incus because of the obvious reasons and I’m happy with it, obviously the fact that the original people who made LXD on Canonical are now working on Incus is a big plus.

Regarding the Proxmox kernel you can read this: pve.proxmox.com/wiki/Proxmox_VE_Kernel but frankly if you search the web for “proxmox kernel bug” what you’ll find are tons of different issues on almost every version. Another thing that I really hate about Proxmox is the startup, the amount of daemons and scripts they run to make the thing work.

TCB13, 1 year ago (edited 11 months ago)

Those machines are very, very good to run Linux. Stable, everything is supported out of the most, very reliable. About calling home, they don’t, however some models, like most machines, have Intel ME baked into the CPU and that can be remotely accessed. The good thing is that you can disable the Intel ME features on the UEFI and there’s a toggle to completely disable the network card before an OS is loaded.

TCB13, 1 year ago (edited 1 year ago)

You don’t need to own a domain, what you most likely need is some kind of dynamic DNS service.

freedns.afraid.org is one of them, they’ll give you a subdomain you can pick and the client will update the IP to which the domain point whenever it changes.

This is what you need, assuming you’ve a public IP from your ISP and you can go into your router and port forward ports to your TrueNAS server.

Now regarding software, since you’re using Syncthing already I would suggest you stay away from the complexities and vulnerabilities of Nextcloud and simply use FileBrowser, this is way easier to setup and use. I believe there’s even something on TrueNAS to get it running.

How if you’re about to expose your NAS/setup to the internet you’ve to consider a few things for your own safety.

Quick check list for outward facing servers:

1. Only expose required services (web server nginx, game server, program x) to the Internet. Everything else such as SSH, configuration interfaces and whatnot can be moved to another private network and/or a WireGuard VPN you can connect to when you want to manage the server;
2. Use custom ports with 5 digits for everything - something like 23901 (up to 65535) to make your service(s) harder to find;
3. Disable IPv6? Might be easier than dealing with a dual stack firewall and/or other complexities;
4. Use nftables / iptables / another firewall and set it to drop everything but those ports you need for services and management VPN access to work - 10 minute guide;
5. Use your firewall to restrict what countries are allowed to access your server. If you’re just doing it for a few friends only allow incoming connection from your country (wiki.nftables.org/wiki-nftables/…/GeoIP_matching)

Realistically speaking if you’re doing this just for you / a few friends why not require them to access the server through WireGuard VPN? This will reduce the risk a LOT and won’t probably impact the performance. This is a decent setup guide digitalocean.com/…/how-to-set-up-wireguard-on-deb… and you might use this GUI to add/remove clients easily github.com/ngoduykhanh/wireguard-ui

With WireGuard you’ll only need to port forward the WG port reducing the attack surface. After you connect to the VPN you get access to the server as if you were on the local network. This mean you’ll even get SMB/Samba access to the files and/or access to any other service the server might me providing, you don’t need anything else or change your current workflow, simply connect to the VPN and access your data as if you were home.

Another advantage of going with WireGuard is that you can more safely ignore the step (4) and (5) because only exposing the VPN through a port forward in your router won’t create much of an attack surface / anything that can be bruteforced. Your setup will be easier to deploy and maintain.

Note that WireGuard is designed with security in mind and it won’t even be visible in typical IP scans / will ignore any piece of traffic that isn’t properly encrypted with your keys.

TCB13, 1 year ago (edited 1 year ago)

Communism is all about state property in all aspects of life. You simply selling people the ideia that everything belongs to everyone (there’s no private property) and that everything should be shared when in fact what you’re trying to do is to instate an extremist government, very similar to a fascist one, that will take control over everything.

It’s good to be communist when you’re on top and I’m sure Hitler felt the same. Not so good when you’re the working class.

TCB13, 1 year ago (edited 1 year ago)

Wait, how come you don’t know who Alexandra Kollontai is? I’m not even anything left leaning and I know about her and her works. And yes she does have very good point, as do a lot of communist but still paints an image of communist and family. Here’s a good example:

Working mothers have no need to be alarmed; communist not intending to take children away from their parents or to tear the baby from the breast of its mother

That’s fair, yet a few lines bellow:

Society will feed, bring up and educate the child (…) Communist society will take upon itself all the duties involved in the education of the child

So you start by saying that the communists don’t want to take children away but then proceed to bring up and educate. That’s kind of suspicious.

To be fair, that could’ve even been true at some point. I see that a lot of the communist ideologies only work if seen from the right angle (ironic) and with good intentions, however what are really communist groups and parties nowadays?

Half of those groups got mixed up with the gender/identity bullshit people - those who end up yelling to politicians about children not getting free gender conversion therapy and whatnot. Those communist groups/parties groups/parties that don’t particularly share their views but agree to “bite the bullet” just for the numbers. Numbers are all fun but this will eventually backfire once those same groups lose their true ideology / identity and become associated with those people and lose all their credibility.

TCB13, 1 year ago

Is Ubuntu deserving the hate?

Yes.

Debian version is the only one that seems reliable enough but, again, it is Debian, the packages are “old”.

Install Debian, then install all the software you might need using Flatpak. There you go, solid and stable OS with the latest of with little to no effort. Bonus extra security.

TCB13, 1 year ago

Too bad time isn’t refundable. Free software is only free if you don’t factor in the time you spend making it work.

TCB13, 1 year ago

reverse engineering an entire operating system isn’t easy

Have you noticed the the NT / Windows XP source code was leaked years ago. There’s isn’t much of a need to “reverse engineering”, it’s just about reading their implementation and providing an alternative implementation that doesn’t copy code…

TCB13, 1 year ago

Well at least I’m not here perpetuating the delusion that desktop Linux desktop is as user-friendly and productive for every use-case as Windows and macOS are. If one lives in a bubble and doesn’t to collaborate with others then native Linux apps might work and might even deliver a decent workflow. Once collaboration with Windows/Mac users is required then it’s game over – the “alternatives” aren’t just up to it.

Windows licenses are cheap and things work out of the box. Software runs fine, all vendors support whatever you’re trying to do and you’re productive from day zero. Sure, there are annoyances from time to time, but they’re way fewer and simpler to deal with than the hoops you’ve to go through to get a minimal and viable/productive Linux desktop experience.

It all comes down to a question of how much time (days? months?) you want to spend fixing things on Linux that simply work out of the box under Windows for a minimal fee. Buy a Windows license and spend the time you would’ve spent dealing with Linux issues doing your actual job and you’ll, most likely, get a better ROI.

Just buy a windows license next time.

Here’s the thing, I can get a legit Windows license by various means. I don’t need to go into microsoft.com and get it for 300$, a second hand windows machine with an old i5 CPU will sell for 50$ and that includes a valid Windows license. Computers selling on retail stores also include a Windows license, students can get them for free etc. what else?

TCB13, 1 year ago

Didn’t companies have to set up ethics walls to protect against lawsuits for things like that?

What are you talking about? There’s copyright infringement that when you copy the leaked Windows source code into something like Wine or ReactOS and then there’s reading it to understand what Microsoft did and coming up with an alternative implementation that will provide a compatible API for programs to use. There’s no “gray zone” or ethical BS - it’s either copied or not.

TCB13, 1 year ago

Guess that rule was in place because some people would look at it and proceed to copy it. The rule should be “if you copy code from Microsoft you’ll be kicked from the project and the code removed”. While I see why this is place and what it protect the project from this is also a very big roadblock to the project’s evolution and a clear example of what’s wrong with it and why we still have compatibility issues.

TCB13, 1 year ago

Oh yes, I value and like Linux a LOT… just not for desktop as it doesn’t deliver as everyone says it does. To be fair I believe that only someone who values Linux as much as I do would be comfortable to criticize what’s wrong with it.

TCB13, 1 year ago

Well I can’t spend all my time trying to fix ridiculous issues that would’ve been fixed by now if people had the balls to look at Windows XP source code…

TCB13, 1 year ago

https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/68158a59-d3e5-45b5-8d29-d74c07b085f4.webp

TCB13, 1 year ago

Guess not, we’re just wasting lemmy’s resources :P

TCB13, 1 year ago (edited 1 year ago)

Build it yourself, avoid proprietary solutions. If you’re after power efficiency go with some ARM board with PCI/M2 slot to use as SATA ports, if you want more performance and want to run a few services on it, get a second hand computer like an HP mini or even a full desktop.

I what would recommend is instead a Mini-PC like the HP EliteDesk 800 G2 DM or the Dell OptiPlex 3050 Micro.

If you plan to create a small NAS for storage and self-host a few services even an old laptop will do it, however there are advantages to picking a mini PC. Those machines are quiet, don’t require much power and some can even fit a 2.5" hard drive so you won’t need external hard drive enclosures.

Mini-PCs are also cheap second hand, you might be able to get an 8th Gen Intel CPU for 100-200€. Sometimes you’ll find really old models (i3 CPU + 4 GB of RAM) selling for 50€ and while those aren’t usable anymore as a Windows desktop they’re are still more than enough to run your NAS/Cloud solution. I would pick something 6th gen or more recent.

For eg. for 100€ you can find an HP Mini with an i5 8th gen + 16GB of ram + 256GB NVME that obviously has a case, a LOT of I/O, PCIe (m2) comes with a power adapter and outperforms a RPi5 in all possible ways. Note that the RPi5 8GB of ram will cost you 80€ + case + power adapter + cable + bullshit adapter + SD card + whatever else money grab - the Pi isn’t just a good option. Aside from the big brands like HP and Dell there are other alternatives such as the trendy MINISFORUM however their BIOS comes out of the factory with weird bugs and the hardware isn’t as reliable - missing ESD protection on USB in some models and whatnot.

A very important thing for you to consider is the storage / hard drive interface. On a Pi you’re usually constrained to USB for your hard drives, however on a Mini PCs you’ve the following options:

• USB Storage - is slower and USB isn’t very robust, not recommended, the only advantage here is that you don’t have to DIY anything;
• Some of those machines come with a SATA port and space for a 2.5" hard drive, either use it a single drive if you don’t need much storage or get a 5 SATA port card to expand it;
• Recent models come with a NVME M.2. slot (PCIe) and that can be turned into 6 SATA ports with a cheap adapter like this.

In both SATA cases you just have to throw NAS hard drives and a cheap power supply at it and you’ll be done. SATA is faster and way more reliable than USB for storage, it won’t randomly disconnect and you will be able to take full advantage of the disks, no speed limitations like in a typical USB connections. Personally I would pick model that has both the SATA connector and the NVME slot and then use the SATA connector for a small 2.5" SSD (boot drive) and the NVME with the adapter above for the NAS hard drives - this option will give you the best performance.

Software: run barebones Debian and install everything from scratch OR use something already made like TrueNAS Scale or OpenMediaVault.

TCB13, 1 year ago (edited 1 year ago)

“I’m not saying gnome is bad here”… but it lacks basic DE features, pushed useless crap like the activity view to people and slow animations that can’t be completely turned off. To top things they try to reinvent the desktop experience every 2 or 3 years and end up making things worse (like when they decided to remove the desktop icons).

All for a “design and usability view” that doesn’t amount to anything productive.

TCB13, 1 year ago (edited 1 year ago)

Now suddenly, there are embedded Raspberry Pis and ESP32s doing realtime facial recognition and video feeds.

Oh yes, you can buy an ESP32-S2 for 2$ and run with Python or something higher level than C and get something that would’ve done with an AVR in days quickly up and running in hours. It is the brand new world of hardware is cheaper than developer time and nobody knows how to code anything and read datasheets anymore. Also there’s the trend of cloud-backed platforms like PlatformIO that essentially make it so you can’t ever develop anything completely offline and become hostage of some provider, ecosystem etc.

Something that might interest you is ESPHome and HomeAssistant. Heads you, you can now flash a microcontroller (be ir an Arduino/AVR or ESP) from a Chromium browser :).