That’s understandable. However, pf (OpenBSD’s firewall system) is incredibly logical and easy to use. I never expected to write a fully operational (bloody thing worked the first time I tried it!) firewall ruleset on a two hour flight from scratch.
I assume you mean “why use these instead of file-manipulation commands in bash?”
I use both.
There are a handful of tasks that are easier in dired than bash.
Making small modifications to filenames that aren’t amenable to programmatic changes. You can just toggle the read-only flag on a dired buffer, edit the filenames, and then hit C-c C-c when done.
Marking a set of files to perform an operation on where that set cannot trivially be expressed using tools in bash. Think, oh, “which movies do I like enough to want to keep around”. This is especially handy when moving a number of files to another directory, which I think is why people often like the two-pane approach of orthodox file managers. Dired is not an OFM, but it can act like that if you have two dired windows open, using the other as the default target for the operation.
Dealing with filenames containing obnoxious-to-type characters like weird Unicode stuff. If I want to delete the one file in a directory whose name consists of a bunch of kanji, it’s easier to just manually select it in a list.
Navigating where I usually want to see the contents of each directory. I’ll often navigate around in dired while building up up an emms playlist. Browsing a list of movies to play.
EDIT: It’s also not really a file manager, but I do use ncdu to see what’s taking up space on a disk. I’ll also use du -h|sort -h|less, but ncdu is, like file managers, more convenient when just browsing around the tree and looking at each as one does so, while manually selecting a few items to operate on (deleting).
EDIT2: I’ll also add that virtually all of the people I know in person who love OFMs – I’m in the US – are from Eastern Europe, moved to the US from Russia, Ukraine, Romania, etc. I dunno why that is. Maybe just spreading along language lines. Maybe there are or were issues with switching between Cyrillic and Latin character stuff akin to my above irritation with kanji. But someone from Eastern Europe might have more input to answer your question.
EDIT3: The link I provided above for OFMs has a very long discussion from the author on why he likes OFMs (though not all terminal file managers are OFMs, many, like Midnight Commander, are). Reading it, I’d say that there’s a lot of overlap with how Emacs works with dired+TRAMP+eshell and some other Emacs packages, though they accomplish similar goals in a different way – sort of making integrated functionality that spans network file transfer, file management, text editing, file archive access, console commands, with a common toolset available for all. Would be quicker to learn an OFM than Emacs, though Emacs is gonna provide a considerably-larger set of functionality if you’re willing to spend the time on it.
EDIT4: There are also a number of OFMs in Emacs, like Sunrise Commander, so I guess I shouldn’t really treat it as an either-or matter.
I build Linux routers for my day job. Some advice:
your firewall should be an appliance first and foremost; you apply appropriate settings and then other than periodic updates, you should leave it TF alone. If your firewall is on a machine that you regularly modify, you will one day change your firewall settings unknowingly. Put all your other devices behind said firewall appliance. A physical device is best, since correctly forwarding everything to your firewall comes under the “will one day unknowingly modify” category.
use open source firewall & routing software such as OpenWRT and PFSense. Any commercial router that keeps up to date and patches security vulnerabilities, you cannot afford.
I had an EdgeRouter X for years before I started my job. They are solid devices, and I’d definitely put them above most consumer routers.
Because they only charge for the hardware, they will eventually run into the same disincentive to provide consistent timely updates. If you do buy an Ubiquiti or similar enthusiast brand, do still keep an eye out for the CVEs that don’t get patched.
I’m about to jump from Ubuntu back to good ol’ Debian. I was planning on testing, but I’ve heard a few times recently that people are running unstable for day-to-day desktop use. Is there any particular reason you went with unstable instead of testing? Any issues so far?
I’m using debian unstable as a desktop OS on all of my 3 regularly used systems: 2 notebooks and 1 desktop. And debian 11 on citrix virtual desktop at work. debian stable on around 200 servers.
I rarely have bigger issues in my day to day usage of unstable which includes surfing, gaming and coding. at the moment my bluetooth headset microphone doesn’t work, which i guess is due to some changes to pipewire but only on my desktop. both my work and private notebook seem to not have issues.
this is one of the worst problems i had in the last 8 years. other then that, if you use apt-listbugs to exclude any updates with serious bugs by pinning them until a bugfree version gets released, you wont have any more issues then you get with arch for example.
Does anyone know of a linux tool that can immediately ban an IP address if they try to log in to ssh with specific user names? I see a ton of attempts in my logs for names like fax, mysql, admin, and of course root. Fail2ban only works if the same IP makes repeated attempts but I’m betting if I could generate a list from these failed attempts it would probably correlate with standard blocklists of compromised hosts. For that matter, is there a way to use an RBL to limit addresses that ssh will even accept? Of course none of these attempts have a chance of logging in, but it would still be nice to further limit my exposure for any future attacks.
As an aside remark, it’s really funny how everyone has to elaborate what the fuck they’re talking about when they talk about Twitter.
In a post on X (formerly Twitter) Ubuntu explains the situation
could have just been written as
In a tweet, Ubuntu explains the situation
but the epic genius elon decided to destroy all brand recognition. Truly incredible thing to witness. Twitter literally got its own branded terms into common lexicon and he just set it all on fire.
And it needs even less memory than Electron, even if it runs as an own instance with a different profile! I replaced Discord with it a year ago and it’s much better in literally every way. I just wish there would be a FF alternative for Electron.
The penguin’s name is “Tux” and he’s the official Linux mascot.
I think Linus Torvalds picked it a long time ago, he said he wanted something that was non-threatening, so hence the penguin lol.
The debate about Linux vs GNU/Linux imo, is one of the stupidest and pedantic debates I’ve ever heard. Maybe it mattered 30+ years ago when things were much less developed and only hardcore nerds and programmers used it, but now days it’s only important to grognards and neckbeards.
Hot take, but it’s like those pretentious music enthusiasts that will argue about what precise genre an artist fits into. “I would say they are post-progressive indie skitzo-pop. No way! They are clearly more neo-grunge sca-punk with post-rock elements” who cares?? Have your ultra-precise categories in your personal music collection all you want, but acting like it’s based on some hardcore objective truths of the universe is stupid.
Nobody is confused when I say I run Linux as my OS. Actually, people do get confused but it’s not because of GNU/Linux, it’s because they haven’t ever heard of Linux and thought that Windows and MacOS were the only 2 OSes for computers.
If somebody genuinely pulled an “um, actually” on me for saying Linux vs GNU/Linux, I would scream laugh loudly and then change the subject.
As someone who uses nnn (occasionally lf) all the time, terminal file managers make navigation (especially bookmarking) easier.
Think Nemo’s my default file manager but with GUI file managers I find it hard to switch contexts. I always used to have two splits open with Nemo but if I need to open a new context I’d have to open another instance of Nemo and then I gotta switch between the instances now.
Now, nnn gives me 4 contexts, which can be easily switched between using 1-4. I’ve added zoxide within nnn to pretty much jump to any directory within my system. This isn’t really possible with a GUI file manager. Guess you can add integration to other tools as well to the list of pros of a terminal file manager.
File preview needs a mention as well. It’s easier when you can quickly glance a file and move on instead of opening it.
My network randomly drops. A restart fixes but I can't even download Cyberpunk with my 1GB connection before it crashes. Klogs showed something about the network manager successfully shutting down but I can't find much else.
Share the output of sudo dmesg logs as well as sudo journalctl -u NetworkManager | cat. The first is the kernel logs about what's going on with your connection, and the second one is from the utility that manages networking on most systems (there's alternatives but pretty sure Manjaro uses NM). It should give us more info as to the reason of the disconnections.
No Radeon software. I sometimes need to record clips/ stream so relive is nice but the biggest problem is my second 1080p monitor I Super Resolution to fit more programs on it. I can't find a way to replicate that functionality. I also do not know how to control Radeon anti-lag, chill, Smart Memory Access, etc.
Most of these things are more deeply integrated on Linux, so you don't need to worry about them for the most part. Some of them are also buzzwords for marketing purposes for features that really should be default on, which on Linux, when it's reasonable, do default to on. For example, you don't turn Smart Memory Access on: if it can use it, it will use it. Same with VRR, at least on Wayland: just on by default on KDE.
ReLive: you can use any screen recorder that will work on any GPU. Right now with the Wayland transition it's a bit weird and OBS is the better choice there, but on an Xorg session you can just use something like Simple Screen Recorder. On KDE, Spectacle, the default screenshot utility also has the ability to record short video clips but it can be a little buggy.
Super Resolution: just set the monitor's scaling to less than 100% in the display settings. It's technically probably better than Super Resolution for apps that supports <100% scaling, because instead of making a fake 4K display for example, it'll render everything at 1080p still but instead cause apps to render smaller, achieving the same result but with the potential of remaining pixel perfect. It won't be doing any AI scaling though, so YMMB.
Anti-lag: it's kind of a hack, and on Linux we're trying to get things right for the graphics stack with Wayland. But if you're running Wayland, KWin is already doing what it can to reduce lag on the desktop, and individual applications have to implement similar methods if they want to. Have you run into specific things where it's noticeable? Linux is generally pretty good when it comes to input lag already.
Chill: you can run games in Valve's gamescope wrapper to limit framerate. That's exactly how they do it on the Steam Deck. You can also use CoreCtrl to underclock the GPU.
Smart Memory Access: it's just marketing for Resizable BAR, and it's on by default. You can check with sudo dmesg | grep BAR=, if it's greater than 256M and equal to your GPU's memory size, it's working.
HDR controls. Nothing in the display settings so I'm lost
Yeah that one's still WIP unfortunately. It's technically possible on Xorg but you have to run everything HDR all the time and things break. It's coming along fairly well!
Alternative Software I haven't spent a lot of time looking but things like wallpaper engine, rainmeter, powertoys.
Wallpaper Engine -> KDE's desktop backgrounds have a lot of options to do similar stuff including animated wallpapers. Go to change your wallpaper, there's a button to download new modules and new backgrounds. For example: store.kde.org/p/1413010
rainmeter -> Conky, or KDE's desktop widgets. Right click on your desktop, add graphical component.
powertoys -> A lot of those have built-in and better equivalents. Fancy zones: we've had that as standard for a good decade here. You can also fairly easily make your own or use other people's KWin scripts, which lets you manipulate the desktop however you want. Here's some examples: store.kde.org/browse?cat=210&ord=latest
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