What are /r/linux4noobs' favorite Products & Services?

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clamav is a pretty decent alternative.
There are less threats focused at linux so as long as you stick with the sensible defaults provided by the distribution and don't download anything silly you should be fine.

Don't install Kali ever

It is not a general use distro

If you make forum posts asking how to install steam on it or why it's so hard and no one will help you, people will just laugh at you

Stop it. Using Kali does not make you hackerman. It's a specific tool for use in live usb environments by a specific profession or researchers

GNU ddrescue is even better.

https://askubuntu.com/questions/211578/whats-the-difference-between-ddrescue-gddrescue-and-dd-rescue

And then the recovery app to try is PhotoRec.

http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/PhotoRec

Github is still "the boss" in my opinion. Simply because more people are active there and therefore the chances are better that you will find people who want to contribute to a project. In addition, Github has developed positively in my opinion since the takeover by Mircrosoft.

Another alternative to Github besides Gitlab that comes to mind is https://codeberg.org. The provider is a registered non-profit organization in Germany. Or you host a version management like Gitea yourself. Then you are completely independent of a provider.

In a terminal, you can run htop, this gives you a very decent overall look at your running processes, how much ram they take up, and so on.

another popular option is to use conky, it puts the information on the desktop, it has its own scripting language, allowing you make layouts however you want, but there are also tons of premade ones you can use, heres what I have on my second screen

you can run a program called VirtualBox inside windows on your pc. THis creates a Virtual Machine which for all intents is a full computer. You can install Ubuntu into a VM, just like you would a normal computer and not worry about messing anything up. If you do, just delete the VM and start over.

I think the best representation of how it will look and feel is using a live usb. First create a live usb. Then give it a try by booting from the USB. Just be sure to select the live session instead of installing. When you're ready to dive completely in you can install using the same usb drive.

All Android phones are Linux phones, in a broad and somewhat peculiar sense. Here's a shell session from my Android app SSHelper:

$ uname -a Linux localhost 3.18.71-13482624 #1 SMP PREEMPT Fri May 4 20:47:19 KST 2018 aarch64 Android

There are some serious limitations to Linux on Android, one being that you can't just create an ext4 partition to have normal filesystem behavior (a particular annoyance of mine). Android's default filesystem is a sort of tortured version of the Windows fat32 filesystem.

On the other hand, using one of the available Secure Shell servers as above, you can use Android as a sort of miniature Linux shell-session experience -- from another machine (Windows or Linux) running a terminal emulator.

There are also Linux emulator environments that seem more Linux-like than the above limited example, some of which ~~don't~~ DO require rooting the phone, like Linux Deploy, a relatively polished example.

EDIT: correction

I was curious if proton would be open source and it is: https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton/

Good on valve, this is definitely a step in the right direction. If steam starts pushing Linux, others might as well.

Check out this link for an overview of directory structure.

There are a few major directories that you should know.

/etc holds system wide configuration files, it will contain almost all config files for daemons and other programs.

/var contains data that will be written too, for example logs are stored in /var/logs and if you are running a mail server, the emails are stored in /var/mail.

/proc is a special directory containing files with hardware information. For example /proc/cpuinfo is a file that contains information about your CPU.

/dev contains files representing your systems hardware. An example is /dev/sda which would be a harddrive on your system.

The various bin directories contain binary files for programs.

/media and /mnt are used to mount different file systems to your own system.

There are many other directories, keep exploring the system and you can begin to learn where important files are stored.

Bunsenlabs isn't commandline-only; I'm not sure who gave you that impression. It comes with Openbox, a minimalist window manager. It's similar to Fluxbox, which is what I like to use. The environment may require more configuration on the commandline, because it comes with less stuff out of the box, but it is in no way "not a GUI".

Having said that, the best way to learn Linux is to use it as your daily operating system. Don't make that operating system unnecessarily limited and difficult to use.

You can't learn everything at once, and you're not going to do yourself any favours by making your learning experience a miserable slog. You don't have to suffer in order to learn how to use a computer properly; this is a frustrating myth.

And I say this as someone who thinks the Linux commandline is great and everyone should learn it. I love it, but I don't use it for everything. I use CLIs for things that CLIs are good at, and GUIs for things that GUIs are good at.

When you select your first distro, pick something which is popular, so that you gain the benefits of a large support community and a large package ecosystem. You can't go wrong with an Ubuntu flavour or something like Mint. Bunsenlabs is built on top of Debian, so it's probably also a perfectly OK choice, but don't choose it just because you think it is somehow better for learning. You can install the Openbox window manager on any distro.

The one single-best reference book on the topic of system administration is: UNIX and Linux System Administration Handbook.

The Linux Bible, How Linux Works, The Debian System, Slackware Linux Essentials, and CompTIA Linux+ all deserve places on the bookshelf.

screenfetch..

install (Ubuntu and Debian):

$ sudo apt-get install screenfetch

then launch

$ screenfetch

result - https://i.imgur.com/LJ6uLKf.png

No, absolutely not. /u/Tired8281 is likely referring to a blog post about paying for software from a few years ago that was extremely poorly worded, but they have since clarified their position and corrected the language.

elementary OS is a legit distribution, based on Ubuntu LTS (currently 16.04, with the next version based on 18.04). Check it out at elementary.io.

Read the Arch Linux installation guide. How does it sound? If it sounds too much for you at this point then go with Manjaro or Antergos. If the install sounds tough but you want to give it a go then trial it in a VM first with Virtualbox (or hypervisor of your choice). If it sounds like something you can do then go for it.

You can check hacker.io tutorial they will have categories and a bunch of tutorials free and some paid.

Do you have a bit of a budget? Linux academy free and paid - these guys just added 70 new courses and are pretty hot. But it’s mostly paid after some free courses to see their teaching style.

Hope this helps.

Good luck.

hehe. you're joking, right?

if not:

1) "root authority enabled" is not a valid command. you can't just make up some word combinations and hope they will work.

2) "root" is a user and not a command.

3) root-system-bin is a software package that has nothing to do with the task you are trying to accomplish.

EDIT: ok, maybe I should be more helpful. :) So, an explanation:

If you want to access a cd with a modern Linux distribution (like Ubuntu) you don't need to use the console to do so. I don't know which distribution you are using, but there is probably a litte icon somewhere on your desktop that lets you open media like CDs, DVDs or USB Sticks. If you open the cd that way it will be automatically mounted for you.

sudo is the command to do things as user "root". Just like you did when installing that software-package you didn't need. So if you really wanted to mount your cd from the console it would be something like

sudo mount -t iso9660 -o /dev/cdrom /cdrom

but i'd advise against it and recommed reading some tutorials about the console first. There are lots available, the first one i just googled for you is this one

Mint XFCE is a great first distro for windows refugees and has a light overhead should be good on battery life. Although LXDE & LXQT or Enlightenment might be lighter https://renewablepcs.wordpress.com/about-linux/kde-gnome-or-xfce/ they might not have a pleasing enough look.

https://www.slant.co/versus/1120/1135/~lxde_vs_lxqt

Do you need one? What problem are you trying to solve by adding a server?

Nothing wrong if you just want to do it to learn but having a clear goal will help you figure out what you need and better figure out how you can accomplish your goals.

You might want to experiment with a local VM before going out to buy any hardware. I would start by installing VirtualBox and booting/installing Ubuntu server. Get familiar with the CLI and the overall concepts in Linux then figure out how to configure what you require on it once you have figured out what you need it for.

clonezilla -

put it on usb and boot to the usb

select diso to disk, clone - advanced (not "beginner") and look for setting "do not check disk size"

then just use the defaults, and it should clone from one disk to the other.

more

https://clonezilla.org/show-live-doc-content.php?topic=clonezilla-live/doc/03_Disk_to_disk_clone

>and maybe online browsing

Basically, that's not really going to work. As far as I can tell, the notebook has 1 or 2 GB of RAM. The current browsers like Firefox often need more than 1 GB RAM these days. Then there is also the operating system. So basically, you're left with using stripped-down browsers like http://links.twibright.com/features.php with less functionality. That would not be fun for me.

You would probably get better performance with a Raspberry Pi 4.

Installing Gentoo is a so easy it can be done in two steps!

> 1) fdisk /dev/hda && mkfs.xfs /dev/hda1 && mkswap /dev/hda2 && swapon /dev/hda2 && mount /dev/hda1 /mnt/gentoo/ && cd /mnt/gentoo/ && links http://www.gentoo.org/main/en/mirrors.xml && md5sum -c stage3-.tar.bz2.DIGESTS && tar xvjpf stage3-.tar.bz2 && links http://www.gentoo.org/main/en/mirrors.xml && md5sum -c portage-latest.tar.bz2.md5sum && tar xvjf /mnt/gentoo/portage-latest.tar.bz2 -C /mnt/gentoo/usr && nano -w /mnt/gentoo/etc/make.conf && mirrorselect -i -o >> /mnt/gentoo/etc/make.conf && mount -t proc none /mnt/gentoo/proc && mount -o bind /dev /mnt/gentoo/dev && chroot /mnt/gentoo/ && env-update && source /etc/profile && emerge --sync && cd /etc && rm /etc/make.profile && ln -s ../usr/portage/profiles/default-linux/x86/desktop make.profile && cp /usr/share/zoneinfo/US/Eastern /etc/localtime && cd /usr/portage && scripts/bootstrap.sh && emerge -e system && emerge vim && emerge gentoo-sources && cd /usr/src/linux && make menuconfig && make install modules_install && vim /etc/fstab && passwd && emerge grub vixie-cron syslog-ng dhcpcd && cp /boot/grub/grub.conf.sample /boot/grub/grub.conf && vim /boot/grub/grub.conf && grep -v rootfs /proc/mounts > /etc/mtab && grub-install --no-floppy /dev/hda && init 6 && emerge gnome mozilla-firefox openoffice && emerge --sync && emerge portage openssh

> 2) reboot

ImageMagick's convert can do that. You are somewhat likely to already have it installed.

For example:

convert image.jpg -resize 30% smaller_image.jpg

or

convert image.jpg -resize 640x480 smaller_image.jpg

If you want to overwrite the image, use the mogrify command from the same package:

mogrify image.jpg -resize 30%

More options here.

You can pass mogrify as many files as you want. If you want to batch-process while preserving the originals, you may want to write a simple for loop:

for image in *.jpg; do convert $image -resize 30% smaller_${image} done

EDIT: More examples.

I would definitely recommend syncthing over dropbox; dropbox is proprietary and stores your data on their own servers. Syncthing keeps your data on your own computers and is open source. https://syncthing.net

For reasons of security, it is preferred that root cannot be logged into directly. One should always login and then elevate to root as needed.

http://serverfault.com/questions/152280/why-shouldnt-root-be-allowed-to-login-via-ssh

I went to the source code for answers.

For those who aren't programmers, neofetch checks for the existence of several distro-specific files and several distro-specific programs, as well as the contents of the /etc/lsb-release, /usr/lib/os-release, and /etc/os-release files if they exist. Failing all that it looks for the names of distros in files named /etc/[whatever]-release (may not be reading this part of the code correctly).

• Browser: Firefox with ublock origin, https everywhere, privacy badger, cookie autodelete (all w/o whitelists)

• Search engine: Duckduckgo

• Email: Protonmail

• VPN: Mullvad - with SOCKS5 proxy over OpenVPN (I've researched this a lot and I really find Mullvad to be the most trustworthy/safe provider. Only grey spot is Swedish jurisdiction, but I can leverage it with a no-log policy I can actually trust. I also appreciate that they do not aggressively advertise - if they advertise at all - and that it's 5eur/month flat. Cherry on top is the fact you don't need a user account - you get a random generated number instead)

• Using RSS to bypass the need to log in to services to get content updates (i.e. Youtube/Google account to get subscription feed)

https://www.debian.org/ports/powerpc/

"The last supported release for 32-bit PowerPC is Debian 8 ("jessie"). See the release note and installation manual for further information. "

I'm afraid you have to downgrade to make it work properly.

I wonder which is the Most Noob Unfriendly Distro ever recommended?

I still wonder at the logic from one CLI Maestro telling a Noob that the only distro they would ever need is Linux From Scratch.

Such a selling point; "Linux From Scratch (LFS) is a project that provides you with step-by-step instructions for building your own custom Linux system, entirely from source code."

The Noob just wanted a nice GUI and Rodent.

For old systems, I like Lubuntu. The advantages are:

• Ubuntu based. Which means it has a lot of easy to access software out there. As a normal computer user, if there is something you want to do 9 out of 10 times it’s either already installed or you can download it off the software center.
• Ubuntu based also means that you can easily troubleshoot it. Just Google “Ubuntu 18.04” and your question. You will find an answer.
• In my experience it’s a stable well tested OS. Depending on the hardware you may run into driver issues, but that’s true of any OS install that isn’t the default manufacture OS. Again, Lubuntu will be easy to troubleshoot. And once you have everything running well it remain that way.
• It’s has a lot of similarities to Windows XP and Windows 7. Some differences as well, but nothing that should drive you away.
• Low hardware requirements. If the system has 1 GB of ram or more it should do fine. Even lower than that could still run well enough.

In general, regardless of the flavor of Linux that you go with a couple of other tips:

• Remember to look up tutorials before your first install. Youtube has plenty of tutorials. Amazon has plenty of books. Just make sure that you are using a new-ish tutorial. Nothing older than 2 years.
• You don’t need to use a terminal if you don’t want to. Modern Linux, especially Ubuntu based systems work have great GUI’s just like Windows or Macs. With that being said, the terminal can be very useful and it’s not hard to get a hang of it. Tutorials will help a lot with that.

This is how I would do it:
1) Run DBAN, so not even a techny new owner can retrieve your data.
2) Install F26, but DO NOT create a user during the installation and do not reboot the machine, but shut it down. This way when the new owner starts it, Gnome will guide him/her through a first time setup.

while I agree that Arch is a great distro for programming, it is a terrible suggestion for someone not somewhat familiar with linux already. Not because its very hard to use, but because of how time consuming the initial setup and learning process is. If you have a day job you want to get up and running as quickly as possible and native arch is not great for that.

I would however recommend a rolling release distro so that the path to getting arch at some point is more streamlined.

Something like Endeavour OS would work well since you can benefit from arch documentation without having to set up everything yourself

> I think it says a lot about how baked I am into the Windows experience that it's hard for me to understand how a file can just not have an extension.

If it helps, the reason Windows is so dependent on file extensions may be that Windows grew out of an old operating system called DOS, which in turn was based on an even older operating system called CP/M. DOS didn't have the ability to flag particular files as executable, so Microsoft decided that compiled executable files would end in .EXE and executable batch files (text files containing DOS commands) would end in .BAT.

> I would love to find an easy-to-understand guide to what's happening when you use Wine to run an .exe.

I can't help you with that because I don't use WINE myself. I don't use any Windows apps at home at all.

However, you might find PlayOnLinux useful. It's a tool you can use to install Windows apps on Linux and set up customized WINE configurations for each app.

I work in Web hosting and this happens quite often (however we're a CentOS shop). I would not advise you to nuke your machine and start from fresh.

I would recommend you track down where the spam is being sent from.

If you can get view the headers of the spam email then you will be able to check if it's coming from an external IP address or if it's from a script on your box. You can use this command to check the headers: postcat -vq (message-id)

You can also look at this: http://serverfault.com/questions/667268/postfix-2-9-or-sendmail-outgoing-spam-prevention-check-if-sender-exists

BTW when I say that this happens quite often it is normally a hacked WordPress or Joomla. We generally tell our clients to update their blog (s), plugins, and themes. Then we tell them to update their WordPress username/pass and remove any unused plugins, and themes.

Everything Search: https://www.voidtools.com/

It's a Windows program that indexes all your files across all drives in real time (runs as a service, or just in the background), and lets you search for folder/filenames instantly. By default when you open the search window, it lists every single file and folder on your computer, then filters down as you type each letter. So much smoother/faster to use than searching complete terms (and hitting enter) multiple times by trial and error when you're not sure of the exact name of something.

The nice thing about this project is that you can just build the GUI part. Shouldn't be a great deal of work, so well suited to a hackathon.

Instead of building the filesystem indexer/database yourself, you can just utilize an index database from another program, like /var/lib/mlocate/mlocate.db (not real time), or maybe even rlocate (real time).

For me the real time indexing aspect isn't so important, more the filter-as-type aspect, and a nice simple & efficient GUI where you can right-click on results and quickly do stuff like:

• launch the file
• open the file or folder's parent folder in your file manager
• copy the folder or full filepath to clipboard
• The rest of the usual Windows File Explorer / other file manager options when you right-click a file (although the above three are more important in my opinion)

And of course like with a file manager, you can sort columns on: folder name, filename, modtime etc.

I am using KeepassXC on my Arch system and it works really well with the Firefox plugin, that lets me use KeepassXC as my password manager. I have not used it on Android, but there is an app that can use the Keepass database called Keepass2Android on android.

You might be better off starting with a scripting language like perl or python. To answer your question, Linux is widely used in the workplace and at colleges. My last two jobs used Linux as the primary OS and I currently work at a large university that uses a lot of Unix and Linux environments. Every place is different though and you might end up at a college or workplace that uses something else.

Also, your editor doesn't matter as long as you use it well. To paraphrase The Pragmatic Programmer, use one editor and master it.

If your only two choices are between Windows 7 and Linux, go for Linux. You don't want an unsupported, unsecure system.

If your games are on Steam, check on ProtonDB to see if they work on Linux. If they're not on Steam, take a look at Lutris. Also take a look at r/linux_gaming, it's a nice and friendly sub.

Regarding your choice of distro, I'd recommend you go for Ubuntu 20.04 LTS or Linux Mint as they're easy for newcomers. It'll probably be best to stick to a lighter flavour of them, so Xubuntu and Linux Mint XFCE are both good options. Lubuntu is even lighter, but it's a lot less polished/user-friendly, and you don't need something that light. Linux Lite is too gimmicky in my opinion and doesn't really bring much interesting stuff to the table compared to Ubuntu and Linux Mint's light flavours.

If your games don't run on Linux, you can either bite the bullet, or give a try to Windows 10, maybe in a dual-boot to have a more usable system when you're not gaming.

Regardless of your choice, if you don't already have an SSD, get one. It makes a world of a difference on old laptops.

The window manager in Windows is DWM, not to be confused with a different window manager available under GNU/Linux also called dwm. A window manager just draws the windows for GUI programs. You can run one without using a full desktop environment.

A desktop environment is a vague concept that usually involves providing the full desktop experience that an end-user would expect. It'll come with a window manager and provide things like desktop icons, backgrounds, and a file browser. It will also usually come with an assortment of other programs that the end-user may find useful, like a text editor. In that regard, you can pretty much build your own desktop environment using a combination of other applications.

>Which Is Compiz?

A window manager. You can install the XFCE desktop environment and replace its window manager (XFWM) with Compiz for example. Since it provides composting you can have interesting effects. Alternatively, you can also get a subset of its features with something like xcompmgr, which provides composting effects to other window managers.

>Metacity?

That is the window manager used by the GNOME 2 desktop environment. You could replace it and keep the rest of the desktop environment if you wish.

>Conky?

None of the above. It's just an application that draws itself on the desktop.

>Is is possible to run a GUI program from just the commandline?

This is an interesting question and it depends on what you mean. If it uses a widget toolkit like Qt4 or GTK, then no. However, if it has framebuffer support then yes. You can for example run mplayer from the commandline and have the video appear in your terminal.

>Should I buy a couple more flash drives

32GB Kingson usb 3.0 flash drive is like $10 on amazon

They're far less wasteful than dvd's.

Also make sure to use dd mode with rufus or uefi boot may not work properly or just use etcher.

https://github.com/debauchee/barrier

What is it? Barrier is software that mimics the functionality of a KVM switch, which historically would allow you to use a single keyboard and mouse to control multiple computers by physically turning a dial on the box to switch the machine you're controlling at any given moment. Barrier does this in software, allowing you to tell it which machine to control by moving your mouse to the edge of the screen, or by using a keypress to switch focus to a different system.

Barrier was forked from Symless's Synergy 1.9 codebase. Synergy was a commercialized reimplementation of the original CosmoSynergy written by Chris Schoeneman.

At the moment, barrier is not compatible with synergy. Barrier needs to be installed on all machines that will share keyboard and mouse.

Make sure you don't do anything with it (always mount ro until you have recovered stuff). Now, depending on whether it fully zeroed, you should be able to recover basically all of it, since all it would have done is wipe metadata.

Try using testdisk first, which you can find on a live recovery disk. It may be able to recover NTFS metadata and allow you to just recover the partition. Usually bundled with it is photorec, a good file recovery tool. You may not be able to recover file names, but you should be able to at least grab files off it.

Once you've recovered what you can, you can try using mkfs.ntfs on the partition and then using some kind of disk checking tool/testdisk again to recover NTFS metadata to see if you can get it back. I know I've managed to mkfs.ext4 partitions in the past without losing much, but I'm not 100% sure how it'll work with NTFS.

If you have a bunch of Windows only applications that you need, then why do you want to swap to Linux?

That said there are a few options to look at. You should check whether the application you need has a Linux version. I'm sure that you may be pleasantly surprised in some cases. If there is not a Windows only option then you may look for Linux alternatives - in some cases the alternatives are actually quite feature-full.

There is a Windows compatibility layer available for Linux called Wine (Meaning "Wine Is Not an Emulator"). For checking compatibility of the application you need with Wine use the database on WineHQ (http://www.winehq.org/). There is also PlayOnLinux (primarily for games) which sets up a specific Wine prefix for each application and downloads the version of Wine which has the best compatibility for your application. This is of course not a perfect solution and you would be better of using Linux alternatives or versions.

I return to my first statement that you should honestly use what works for you. If Windows is the only way you can use many of the applications you NEED then stick with Windows. You could of course do what I did for many years and dual boot between Windows and Linux. This means having both operating systems on your hard drive and choosing at boot up which one to use. Eventually my reliance on Windows programs has dwindled and now I only run Linux.

Here's a step by step method for using Windows to create a bootable USB stick, in this example, it uses Ubuntu, but I think you could use the distro of your choice.

How to create a bootable USB stick on Windows

Setup up PiHole as your local DNS. Edit the default block page to add said image. Reconfigure your DHCP server (probably router) to point to the PiHole as the primary nameserver for your network DHCP clients.

Done.

> The app is "tuptime" it displays the total system uptime, average uptime, current uptime. Also downtime! Basically neofetch or "uptime" on steroids.

Thanks for the suggestion!!

sudo apt install tuptime

Loving it!

I had been using SyncThing for a long time now. Mostly to back up my camera pics between my smartphone and my laptop.

A few weeks ago I found this Instagram mod - for Android. Its coolest feature is the ability to download media with one-tap. The download folder is SyncThing-ized to my laptop, and a wallpaper script that randomly rotates every hour. I've never had so many nice wallpapers.

Gotta love SyncThing.

Did you see this on the linked page?

> This is the changelog for the master branch, the one that is currently in active development. The plain-text version of this document is available here: changelog.txt

> For other branches, the changelogs are distributed with the source,

This is the latest changelog of the 1.0.1 stable branch: https://git.openssl.org/?p=openssl.git;a=blob;f=CHANGES;h=e2edbaf66cca50994bfab80f523e5b5d24d348e1;hb=refs/heads/OpenSSL_1_0_1-stable

For the version number used in debian refer to: https://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/ch-controlfields.html#version

Debian has lot's of ports: https://www.debian.org/ports/ One of them uses a BSD kernel instead of a Linux kernel.

Not every port has access to the whole repository (not every package has been ported).

Unless you have something very specific in mind, in general the programs available for BSD OSs are available for Linux, see for example: https://www.freebsd.org/applications.html

One thing, Debian GNU/kFreeBSD is nowadays more a proof of concept than an OS for daily use, if you are interested in a BSD OS, it's probably better to go straight to FreeBSD or OpenBSD.

The closest DAW to Ableton is https://www.bitwig.com/ it's cross platform.

Lightworks is a professionally used video editor regularly used in the film industry. It's free if you only need to edit up to 720p. Otherwise you can buy it if you need 1080p+.

https://www.blender.org/ can also be used for video editing. But apparently the learning curve is pretty steep, as it's maining used for 3d rendering stuff.

The other video editors on Linux are pretty basic and buggy in my experience coming from using Vegas.

I do some video editing (Vegas) and photo editing (Lightroom), and the stuff I've tried on Linux just doesn't cut it for my needs. So when I'm on a Linux machine I either dual boot or use a Windows virtual machine.

But if gaming, video and audio editing are 90% of what you do on your computer, there's not really much benefit to switching to Linux. You'll be making a lot of compromises without much good reason.

Real Linux: http://www.linuxfromscratch.org

And, no, I haven't done that, yet. Moving from Debian to Arch, myself. Real Linux....that would be a 0.8x kernel that requires use of a jump table? I see the rise of Ubuntu and Mint as proof that the goals of FOSS are thriving.

Doesn't matter who posts it, NEVER pipe curl directly into a shell. Just add -o $FILENAME to the end so you can check out what you actually downloaded. It's possible to actually serve a malicious script only when being piped to a shell like that. Don't risk it, run the file after downloading if you really want to.

Also, they have a lot of more secure download and install methods

You have a physical machine. Inside it you can put a virtual machine. It's just a program which pretends to be a normal computer. It enables you to run Windows under Linux, Linux under Windows, BSD under Linux, BSD under Windows, and so on.

For VM software I usually reccomend VirtualBox because it's free and quite simple to learn for someone who has no experience with them already.

Advantage: You can run multiple different OSes under a single one.

Disadvantage: Performance isn't perfect, especially for games.

Of course, there is always Wine which I would suggest trying before a VM.

Linux Mint. Ubuntu is a bit wobbly, I agree.

Pick the cinnamon edition, it's really stable and nice. You'll like it.

EDIT: Gentoo is pretty cool but you spend a lot of time compiling. Maybe you'd want to take a look at Arch

It'll make it less likely that the OS is going to run on older hardware.

This is a discussion that's been going on for quite some time now; here is a nice longer read.

Use elementary OS. Its basically a mac-clone in terms of appearance. Its minimalist to start, which you say you don't like, but it lets you arbitrarily customize if you want to add features. Just google what you want it to do and follow the instructions.

There's nothing to be done about getting MS Office (or Adobe CC presumably) on linux though, if it doesn't already exist.

While what you are looking to do is possible, I personally wouldn't bother. I'd take the cloud-storage route and make good use of Gdrive, Dropbox, Evernote, etc... to keep all of my stuff. Then I just need to re-install the apps on a new system and have access to everything I need. Other files and things you don't want stored there for whatever reason, could easily be stored on a flash/external drive.

I have a Ninite installer I keep around that installs all of my most-used apps. New system, run the installer, a couple minutes later, all my apps are installed and ready to go.

Of course, this is just what I would do in your situation. There's nothing stopping you from installing linux onto external media and booting from it if you so choose to go that route.

I dont think you would want to use wine to run Rufus, that might be a bit beyond wines abilities, since rufus needs root access (i imagine) to directly write to a /dev/DEVICE.

wine basics..

1. Install wine.

2. Find an app you want to install in wine - One i commonly use is 'bulk rename utility' because I know how to use it. Download its installer.
   http://www.bulkrenameutility.co.uk/Download.php

or via the command line..

wget http://www.bulkrenameutility.co.uk/Downloads/BRU_setup.exe

cd to the location where the downloaded exe is at. tell wine to run it..

cd /home/bubba/Downloads wine BRU_setup.exe

CaSe MaTtErs!

This should start the exe, and launch the gui/installer for it.. a few clicks of ok/next and it should install a menu item in your linux menus, and/or add an icon to the desktop.

1. Click the icon Run it as you do any other linux program.

2. If you want to run it via the command line, cd to where the wine program installs stuff ( ~/.wine/c_drive/Program Files ) (i think is the default) and use 'wine whatever.exe'

Well thats the basics.. There are front ends to make things 'nicer'

Good Luck.

I find that just 'double clicking an .exe' you downloaded - often fails, and wine will be showing some error messages to the 'standard output' that you do not see.. this is why i normally install things with wine via the cli, to see any potential error messages.

Never ever ever use an unpaid VPN. They’re selling your data. You can find plenty for less than $40/year which is a great deal. If you don’t want to pay, use TOR.

I personally use mostly IVPN and love it, particularly with WireGuard. PIA (Private internet access) is good too but recently got bought and there were some concerns there, though I think that controversy was overblown and they’ve convinced me they’re still legit. I have a subscription to them too and use it on my Linux devices. PIA is way cheaper than most vpns of comparable quality. PIA also has an app for Ubuntu based systems that doesn’t require any setup. It’s download and use, just like on Windows, with zero configuration. If you’re not Linux saavy that’s a big deal.

Mullvad is extremely reputable and secure but has fewer servers than IVPN.

“” has a thorough VPN comparison tool. After looking at hundreds of options, I settled on IVPN as my main choice.

I use IVPN because it’s fast and has WireGuard and lots of servers and is outside 14 eyes. It also has DNS leak protection, a good app, and all the goodies. It just costs a bit.

In short, if money and features is your concern: PIA. If security is your top concern: Mullvad. If you want a balance of features, ease of use, and security: IVPN.

Create a file in /etc/systemd/system/

[Unit]

Description=<a rel="nofollow" href="https://go.nordvpn.net/aff_c?offer_id=15&amp;aff_id=31788&amp;url_id=902">NordVPN</a>

After=network.target

​

[Service]

Type=simple

User=%I

Group=%I

ExecStart=<your_start_command>

ExecStop=<your_stop_command>

Restart=on-failure

RestartSec=30

StartLimitInterval=60s

StartLimitBurst=3

​

[Install]

WantedBy=multi-user.target

​

Once that is saved, run "systemctl enable nordvpn@<your_username>"

Test by running "systemctl start nordvpn@<your_usrname" and "systemctl status nordvpn@<your_username", as well as trying to use the internet.

&#x200B;

Replace the lines <your_start_command>, <your_stop_command>, and <your_username> with the applicable values.

On your next reboot, it will auto start and make sure you are connected.

He is somewhat incorrect. Unix is a set of standards that an OS has to comply with to be an official UNIX operating system.

Linux conforms to most of the UNIX standards, but to be considered UNIX, they would have to get certified with every release which is expensive and time consuming. Non-conformance is considered a bug. Linux is defacto unix

Sources:

The Linux Programming Interface by Michael Kerrisk

Linux System Programming by Robert Love

there are some adblocking dns servers you can setup for your entire home network. Some are also focused on 'child safe' browsing and so forth. 'adguard' is one such service, there are likely others.

You can also setup a 'pi-hole' server on your home network and run your own ad/XXX blocking dns server.

List of DNS servers..

https://kb.adguard.com/en/general/dns-providers

Info about Pi-Hole

https://pi-hole.net/

So part of this subreddit is to help people with specific tasks but also to empower the users so I'll go into a bit more detail than needed.

One of the biggest hurdles to overcome when using Linux is the terminology and knowing what to search for. The setup your college uses is called a 'Captive Portal'. It redirects all requests for web pages back to an internally hosted web sever with a login form page. The technologies involved range from RADIUS for the login form to WISPr (short for Wireless Internet Service Provider Roaming) for the hotspot authentication.

Knowing these pieces of information allow you to search for a plausible answer. Of which I have two possibilities.

This link, specifically the second response and this link which is a package for authenticating agasint WISPr via the command line.

I hope this helps.

EDIT: So I've been downvoted, probably because of the way this reads. I apologise if this comes across as patronising, I did intend for it to just be a learning experience.

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/installation_guide

Arch is considered "scary" because it has no installer like other distros do. Instead you have to do it all manually.

Id try it in a virtual machine like virtualbox first before you commit to it. If you decide its not for you no problem, and if you can install it there and use it no problem then you can install it to your hard drive.

Lite, Netrunner, Elementary, Peppermint, PCLinuxOS, openSUSE,Korora, Sabayon, Voyager, BunsenLabs, Etc.

http://distrowatch.com/

Try out some Window Mangers. That should take the boredom out.

i3, JWM, or openbox.

Make things look like at r/unixporn

Use :Ex to open the file explorer (:Vex for new vertical split with the explorer, :Sex for horizontal, :Tex for tab). If you use vim-vinegar, substitute :Ex with - and keep pressing - to go to the parent directory. If I know which file I want to open beforehand, I use fzf, which allows to open files in splits or tabs too.

To move the working directory to the current file's path, I use :cd %:p:h, which I have mapped to <leader>cd.

These are just commands for exploring files, there are many more for just empty buffers and stuff.

• SystemRescueCd : A life-saver. Always having a USB stick with it around. Small, simple and has all tools needed to deal with almost any problem.
• Well....LFS : Not really a system for using. But doing the LFS and BLFS book once help so much to understand distro internals and linux systems in general. And...you get the joy of feeling you really installed a linux system yourself.

Are you running Compton? There's a workaround for it on the Arch wiki page for Compton. On mobile now but will find the link for you later.

Edit: Looked up my config. What worked for me is to add "_GTK_FRAME_EXTENTS@:c" to shadow-exclude in my compton.conf. Source: https://github.com/chjj/compton/issues/189

I distro hop to 44 Primary Linux distro's in my 15 years using Linux. I'm currently using MX and MX I'm staying. No more distro hopping. I did install Virtualbox to give me a fix now ant then. Right now in my Virtualbox is PopOS!.

&#x200B;

https://mxlinux.org/

Depending on what you use photoshop for, you could look into Krita. https://krita.org/ It's updated quite often, has a similar-ish interface, but is geared more toward content creation than photo editing. Either way, it may fit your needs.

> I don’t like Unbuntu. I tried it and I got the impression that I should just be using Windows because I couldn’t hardly run anything without WINE. I’m not trying to make enemies here, I just don’t want it.

Unless you are talking about the alcoholic beverage, expect WINE to be a large part of your life if you depend on applications that are native only to windows. (and have no linux alternatives)

If you use iTunes take a look at banshee and amarok as they are the two leading music players and managers that support syncing to iDevices (granted you cannot do more than manage the music on your iPod)

If you give us a list of software you use on XP we can help you find alternatives for Linux.

This shell function:

cd () { builtin cd "$1" && ls; }

would avoid the recursion issue, try to cd into the first argument, and ls that dir if the cd worked.

edit: s{~~command~~}{builtin}

For extra credit, explore $CDPATH, pushd, and popd.

Here's a previous discussion.

and a bunch of questions tagged cd.

Note that cd/popd/pushd tools are a sort of rite-of-passage for shell users - many people have written many little aliases, functions, and scripts to handle the common issues in this area - so there is plenty to explore.

Save your money. JDownloader has a Linux version.

http://jdownloader.org/download/index

There even other Linux software options to choose from as well.

https://alternativeto.net/software/candisoft-load-/?platform=linux

Linux has every single tool you need. You just need to know it's name and learn how to use it.

That is actually incorrect. The pay.reddit is a hack used by HTTPS Everwhere to make reddit serve up HTTPS links to reddit. This is a fully functional link that also is secure.

See the stable branch section for the code. I hear reddit is working to implement a full and intended HTTPS version of reddit, but until then this is the default way.

The reason pay.reddit works is because it is the link your browser would be directed to if you were purchasing gold (if I recall correctly).

> learn shell scripting basics (for small 5- 20 lines)

I did this several days ago.

During the mock-up process in Web Dev, I frequently go to unsplash to get an image, download, copy to /images, and resize. This does it all for me:

#!/bin/bash

function unsplash {
    local FILENAME=unsplash-$(cat /proc/sys/kernel/random/uuid | sed 's/[-]//g' | head -c 10;echo)
    wget -q -O $FILENAME.jpg https://unsplash.it/1920/1080/?random
    echo $FILENAME.jpg
    convert -geometry 450x $FILENAME.jpg $FILENAME-450w.jpg | echo
    convert -geometry 800x $FILENAME.jpg $FILENAME-800w.jpg
}
unsplash

Generates names like this unsplash-bb16393268-450w.jpg & unsplash-bb16393268-800w.jpg.

I know there are other ways to generate a hash, but this works for me.

I was so excited, I started working on another one that uses the API from https://picsum.photos/v2/list.

I've never really tried to do anything in bash, and this has been very rewarding :)

Personally I prefer to wait a month after a Ubuntu release for them to work out any issues - they do tend to have them every few releases (some times quite bad ones, like how 17.10 actually bricked a lot of hardware by cruppting the BIOS). But it really depends on how critical the system you are installing it to is.

not sure if you're aware, but OpenVPN is a VPN client. it's the program you use to connect to a VPN provider. a VPN provider would be let's say or ExpressVPN. they are the companies providing the servers you connect to and route your encrypted network data through

Aren't there still two holes that can be used to solder two pins that you can use a standard pc-like switch to reset, which when already off will turn it on?

http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/add-reset-switch-raspberry-pi/

Screen recorder: OBS (It's also the best one for Windows in my experience)

Video editor:

• Pitivi (free)
• Cinelerra (free and commercial)
• OpenShot (free)
• Lightworks (commercial, free version sucks)
• Blender (swiss knife of media production, can replace almost entire Adobe suite on its own, used by Pixar Animation Studios, hard to master)

I'm currently going through Udacity's Git tutorial and would recommend it. Goes through everything from installing it to setting it up with custom text editors as well as through a lot of the commands.

Grive and its graphical frontend grive-tools should do the trick:

Link to tutorial

Link to launchpad ppa

If you want to build a custom use computer, I would recommend Arch Linux. If you want to write the OS completely perhaps you will find what you want at Linux from Scratch

>What is the best Arch based distro when I don't want to take a hassle of installing the vanilla version?

Since April this year, an installer has been part of the official iso file. With it, you only have to answer a few questions (https://github.com/archlinux/archinstall).

Alternatively, you can check out https://endeavouros.com. This is basically Arch Linux with a graphical installer.

I would advise against Manjaro because the team responsible for it has already made too many avoidable mistakes.

Virtuawin is amazing. Gives you the multiple workspaces on windows xp/7 and works with dual monitors (which is iffy on ubuntu). virtuawin and it's open source...

Dont get me wrong. Go ubuntu if you can. I use adobe products a lot, so i cant :*(

Old computer

Ubuntu might be too heavy, may want to try one of the *buntu variants.

You might also want to burn a few ISO Crunchbang, Wheezy, Cylon, Zorin, Puppy and have him try a few before install.

Also pay attention to the Architecture compatibility.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_Linux_distributions#Architecture_support

http://distrowatch.com/search.php

I work in a PC Shop and deal with this quite a bit due to being in business a LOooooooooong time at this location. We get a lot of elderly customers.

The Linux distro easiest to for them to process is Zorin. It even has a built in Windows compatibility layer using Wine. It looks & works like Windows right out of the gate and will be about as easy a transition to Linux for an old XP user as you can get. It's ubuntu based and well supported.

Well... you could install some basic programs, do you know how to use apt-get? Or any commands in the terminal?

You could always try to make your desktop pretty. I'm assuming that you have the ubuntu 14.04 with Unity?

This site has some cool things to do.

Do you want to eliminate all potential distractions, or just have that distraction-free environment when you need it? If it's the second thing, you could install focuswriter. I'm using Linux Mint and it's one of the packages available through the package manager.

If you're really determined, maybe consider /r/freeDOS (not Linux, actually a continued development of a DOS-style OS) with USB extensions, which offers that kind of environment by default.

I've been using NordVPN quite successfully for about a year now and just this week, they even released a native Linux App, so you don't have to fiddle with .ovpn files anymore. Additionally, they're based in Panama and have a no-log policy.

As for password managers, I'll probably get some hate in here, but I love my LastPass. It's a cloud-based online password-manager. Your passwords are encrypted by your master-key, so not even LastPass can access them. And I just like the peace of mind that all my passwords are available to me everywhere.

> If the file is deleted, the file handle remains open and can still be used (This is not what some people expect). The file will not really be deleted until the last handle is closed.

You didn't expect that.

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2028874/what-happens-to-an-open-file-handler-on-linux-if-the-pointed-file-gets-moved-de#2031100

Installing programs with GUI:

• find out what Linux-compatible software you need, such as GIMP instead of Photoshop
• hit Windows key, and type/click "Software" or "Shop"
• enter the name of the software in the search bar
• open the app's page and click Install

If you've never used Linux or a terminal before, now doesn't need to be the time you start. There's an "app store" just like on any proprietary platform.

They should use the same driver, it shows your current card in Nvidia Xserver Settings?

What driver number are you using? If you're not using the Ubuntu graphics drivers ppa you probably should to easily get new up to date drivers that Mint doesn't supply. https://launchpad.net/~graphics-drivers/+archive/ubuntu/ppa

It is usually also no problem to install the updates only every few weeks. And the amount of announcements at https://www.archlinux.org/news/ are usually very manageable (this year there are 4 so far) and can usually be solved by copying and pasting.

>Other distros are fine as well.

Of course. Everybody should use what suits them. For me this is currently Arch, for others it's Debian or OpenSuse. I don't understand this rivalry between some users of various distributions anyway. Basically we use all Linux distributions. Only the details are different. And here it is like ice cream. One likes vanilla, another strawberry or chocolate.

or enable proton logging because the error likely is with proton, not with steam
https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton/#runtime-config-options

PROTON_LOG=1 %command% as launch option in Steam for the game, then a log file will be in your $HOME

The .eu link looks sketchy. Very few legitimate websites use the .eu domain, unless it's something very specific to Europe. Also very few legit websites use a hyphen in their name.

Good of you for asking before you download.

The actual website is https://www.balena.io/etcher/

If you're not opposed to using vector graphics instead of raster (lines instead of dots), Inkscape is a great option. https://inkscape.org/

If you're only making some flyers, the base tech (vector/raster) shouldn't really matter from your perspective.

Yes, use

dpkg --get-selections > my.stuff then copy my.stuff to a flash drive or or removable storage. When your new install is up and running, copy my.stuff to your home folder, then run

dpkg --set-selections my.stuff

Or you can use Synaptic Package Manager for this, see https://lifehacker.com/5146028/save-synaptic-markings-to-speed-up-ubuntu-reinstallation

Let's see: I would personally suggest Mint.

Reasons are as follows: Programs developed for Ubuntu will work on Mint. You will have access to Banshee, VLC player, Libreoffice and many other programs. There are no benefits of Cinnamon over MATE or vice versa. MATE is a branch off on the discontinued GNOME 2 (a very popular and customizable Desktop environment) and is very familiar to the way Windows menus are. Cinnamon is a relatively new desktop environment and based on GNOME 3 (the successor to GNOME 2). Cinnamon is quite stable but may require better specs than MATE. Development for Cinnamon and MATE are ongoing and both can be installed via the repositories and changed at Log on.

EDIT: And I recall that the new bleeding edge Cinnamon version 1.6 would be backported to Mint 13 (which receives long term security and app updates), so you wouldn't have the hassle of upgrading if you don't to.

MATE and Cinnamon also offer better configuration options as compared to Ubuntu.

Yep. The Dolby "enhancement" is what's causing your difference in sound. Dolby is altering the frequency levels to try to make up for the terrible speakers that come in laptops.

As others have suggested, you could try a system-wide equalizer like pulse. Other than that - no, there is nothing equivalent to what is being done on the Windows side.

Great games, most I already played before.

No More Room In Hell Is a very good one.

I didn't really check, but are you saying all these games are FOSS?

To me it doesn't matter. If I enjoy the game, I'm playing it FOSS or not.

The resent games I been playing are;

Wasteland 2; The Director's Cut

Superhot

My all time favorite game has always been Prey(2006).

Which most other Linux games I been playing are in this links. Which cover a few that you have on your link.

http://www.penguspy.com

Howabout Ubuntu Mate? It should run reasonably well on your hardware, and sounds appropriate to your use-case.

Ther's also BunsenLabs, a successor to crunchbang, if you feel like trying something a little different. It's basically debian with a pre-configured and lightweight window-manager (openbox), and install scripts for things like dropbox and steam that aren't in the repos.