Around 2007 I had a Windows laptop die on me and drove me to device agnosticism. Maybe I learned the wrong lesson but now I keep my OS and data separate enough that a b0rked OS is an hour’s inconvenience instead of a day’s recovery.
Still, it’s pretty awesome that you can just shuck a drive into a totally new machine and only have to adjust network settings.
I know it is kinda frowned on but I like to use new directories at root to cut down on confusion as to where things are. Video storage for the NVR goes in /video, user data for Nextcloud goes in /data, etc. But I also keep everything in it’s own LXC so I don’t have one machine with 30 extra directories cluttering up the root.
I have given in to GNOME. Set dark mode, install the extension “Tactile” and never touch the setting again.
“File Browser” or “Sharry” allow you to make public links to share files with others BUT you need to run them on a server that is accessible to both parties.
I’ve been using Linux as a desktop and server since 2015, before that I was Windows only from 1995. Regedit scares me.
limiting bitrates with the rsync command
/cries in USB2 HDD caddy
In the past 5 years stability has improved significantly, like I haven’t had a crash in the past year of casual use. ymmv but I would recommend it to new users at this point.
I love mc for its sftp/ssh capabilities. It makes it so much easier to do remote admin/support.
Taken from ‘Don’t Break Debian’
Take notes
It’s easy to forget the steps you took to do something on your computer, especially several months later when you’re trying to upgrade. Sometimes when you try several different ways of solving a problem, it’s easy to forget which method was successful the next day!
It’s a very good idea to take notes about the software you’ve installed and configuration changes you’ve made. When editing configuration files, it’s also a very good idea to include comments in the file explaining the reason for the changes and the date they were made.
Taking good notes will save your as so many times. Good notes are as important as good backups.
Every day we stray further from god. I wonder if it could be used to make the worlds worst VNC server…
Why would anyone NOT parse a tab as whitespace? Like, python really wants you to use spaces but will still let you use tabs if you are consistent.
I’ve seen people say that a few times here but any time I use gparted I get the Gnome ‘enter password’ dialog which seems to work fine.
Do not do this. “Run as Administrator” is a Windows answer to a Windows problem. The only time you should regularly need root privileges is installing software and editing system wide configuration files.
That’s a permissions problem not a run as root problem.
God damn, what I wouldn’t give to have a 4k 4:3 CRT.
For 16:9 (ish) displays you have more pixels left to right than up and down, it makes sense to use up your horizontal space first when placing permanent UI elements on your screen. Still up to preference though.
As much Gnome can be a pain to customize, out of the box I still like it for its get-out-of-the-wayness. Tap the super key, type a few chars of the name of software you want to run, hit enter and its back to being a taskbar. Very similar to tab completion in the terminal for me.
Oh man, in 10 years of Linuxing this is the best description of WHY you would use these directories not just what they are for. Thanks!
Because most selfhosters are too lazy or inexperienced to break away from cloud services. Docker is great but it has also enables a “just run this docker” mentality that mirrors the Windows “just run this exe.”
edit: I think that the opportunity to learn how a project works, how to debug problems and how to integrate a project into their own setup is obscured.
I took this approach as well but I let Grub add Windows as a boot option. No mashing keys at post and Windows doesn’t get to touch Grub or Debian.